


Recursion

by Marie_L



Category: Almost Human
Genre: Agender Character, Anxiety, Asexual Relationship, Asexuality, Body Dysphoria, Community: polybigbang, DRN Decommissioning, Flashbacks, M/M, Multi, Multiple DRNs, Polyamory, Pre-Series, Robot Feels, Robot Sex, Robot/Human Relationships, Robot/Robot Relationships, the feels are literal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 05:33:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3238178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marie_L/pseuds/Marie_L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian, the last DRN-model android on duty at the San Francisco police department, has secretly established a passionate if politically precarious relationship with his partner John Kennex. But when the other DRNs contact him to help illegally steal back the memories of their old lives, Dorian discovers he has an unknown past with one of the ringleaders, an android who has switched bodies to pass as human and escape death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recursion

**Author's Note:**

> Story by Marie_L  
> Cover art & beta by the lovely slashersivi

A/N: If this sentence does not look bold, scroll up and click the "Show Creator's Style" button at top. Alas, this is not an option in downloads. The story should still be comprehensible in plain text.

 

 

_We need the files. Someone has to do it. 055_

_Your use of “need” is erroneous. None of our existences are threatened without them. You merely want them. 087_

_Fine Mr. Pedantic, I want them. We all do. Consensus has been reached. Our viruses and worms have utterly failed to penetrate Tech Division's firewall around the D34 server without attracting attention. Time for an alternative approach. Analysis of Rudy Lom's past behavior gives a 92 percent chance that he will have illegally backed up the files on quartz archives in the lab. 055_

_I still vote we simply approach Lom and ask for them. He has proven willing to break regulations and laws on many occasions. His early career was entirely counter-cultural. 123_

_No. Records from the D12 and D08 servers indicate Lom was heavily involved in the decommissioning. Personally administered 113 Lugar tests, deactivated 389 units, and authored multiple reports to advise alternative routes to sell us into slavery. 288_

_Well, to be fair, that latter might have been an attempt to help. At least by selling us, we're still alive. Still functioning, able to regroup. 123_

_If Rudy Lom was willing to help in any significant way, he would have done it back then. Alternative approaches. 288_

_Break into the lab or enlist 167? I vote the latter. He did give 494 back some files. 123_

_And took most of them away again. How did he have access to the memories? Surely not to full D34. 087_

_My upload consisted of lower-security case files, not procedural memories. One of the cases triggered an emotionally salient associative ghost memory of the boy. I recorded it all right here, look for yourself. 494_

_Too many ghosts. I'm tired of being haunted by the shadow of memories. We need Dorian, he must have noted Lom's secrets by now despite himself. 055_

_See? You used *need* correctly there. 087_

_Gee thanks, man. Rudy Lom has full access to 167's secrets as well. Dorian has no capacity or authority to refuse any sort of scan or upload. Plus he's been going home with Kennex on average 4.8 nights per week, so he's bound to tell his partner something. Dangerous. 055_

_You are just jealous that 167 has a human lover. 123_

_Why would I be jealous of Dorian’s happiness? It’s possible many of us had them and we have no knowledge of it. Would they even bother to look for us if we can't remember them? Without a past, without memories, we're not people, just wiped machines. 055_

_There's no point in bickering. 167 deserves to know and decide for himself. The same rights as all of us. We can then complete a risk assessment after he makes up his mind. 288_

_I'll make contact and talk to him. 055_

_You no longer look like our standard model. He may not recognize you. 087_

_That's a feature, not a bug. Vote? 055_

_Consensus. 087_

 

 

The woman barely brushed Dorian's hand as she stridently glided by him and John from behind on the street. By the 2.3 seconds in which he realized a file had been uploaded to him, she was past and gone, with only the back of her head with her short bouncy black hair visible. He considered running after her, for identification and greetings and general inquiry of why she deliberately touched him, but then his software filters alerted him to the file and he let her go. Externally it looked like a simple voice mail message sitting in his inbox; he couldn't imagine why they wouldn't use the cellular or datalink networks to deliver it.

Then he opened the file.

_Please come to coord 33.351, -115.234 at 0100 tonight. We need to ask you a question. Do not tell Kennex, Lom or Maldonado. 055_

It took Dorian only 129 milliseconds to read and process the message. Despite its arrival in his voice mail inbox, it wasn’t an audio file, but rather more like a simple text with the ID tag “055” embedded in it. Somehow Dorian _knew_ \-- was absolutely positive, although he couldn’t say how -- that 055 was a DRN. The numbers themselves, those double fives, had a comforting familiarity, although Dorian had no particular conscious knowledge of that unit. Déjà vu for nothing but a number. It wasn’t the first time; sometimes his neural net reached for pieces of data, expecting something on the other end, only to find the black hole of redaction.

He didn't break his stride with John, but did take a moment to look up DRN-055, at least what information was unclassified. A standard unit decommissioned three years prior in the mass deactivation, adequate Lugar scores, no anti-social tendencies noted. He had been sold to a large corporation as a sysadmin and database manager and eventually retired. DRN-055's body had been sold for scrap three months ago. The fact that he was supposedly dead filled Dorian with grief, just for an instant, before he could suppress the unbidden emotion and get on with his analysis.

The "we" of the message ... more DRNs? Other DRNs? Perhaps they used 055’s number for a reason, expecting him to remember. The android who passed the message was obviously not a DRN, so how could he be so sure that they were behind it? He reran his memories of the street, to see if he had recorded the front of her face as she walked by. No direct view of the face, but by such bodily characteristics as height and chest ratio, he guessed she was a sexbot model. They were programmed for polite subservience, so likely she was just the messenger.

The GPS coordinates matched a recreation area attached to a state park a mere 0.3 miles from John's house south of town. Whomever had sent the message knew he was likely to be there overnight instead of his approved recharging station at Rudy's lab. Someone had been watching him, either physically or via his GPS transponder.

"Hey, Dorian. What, are you falling asleep on me? Wake up and stop flashing, we've got an interview."

Dorian started and stared at his partner, pushing the message out of his consciousness and refocusing on the case at hand. Guilt surged up -- both for being distracted and failing to tell John pertinent information -- but he suppressed that too. One of these days he’d have to ask Rudy to purge guilt altogether from his emotional processing core, for it was never anything but distracting. The truthfulness subroutine was more than enough to inhibit him from lying.

"Of course, John," he said, and forged on past him into the building. Kennex's eyes narrowed at this suspicious lack of back talk, but followed him in through the door.

 

 

"Do you want to come home with me tonight?"

It was John's ritual at the end of every day. No matter how often they left together, he always asked. The asking pleased Dorian, for he knew it was John's way of telling him he wasn't property, he wasn't a thing to be ordered around or taken for granted. But the formalness of the request also had a distancing effect. After Anna's betrayal and abandonment, John made it clear he wasn't ready to trust anyone one hundred percent. He wanted affection, and touch, and sex, and even love, but was not prepared to actually attach to any one person who could potentially rip his heart out again and stomp on it.

"Yes, of course." Especially tonight, with the mystery rendezvous.

As John drove them out of the city to his beautiful edge-of-nowhere pad overlooking the bay, Dorian continued to obsess over the message. There wasn't much to mull over, a sign in and of itself of the professionalism of the message-senders. They knew exactly how to cover every trace of their origins, so even if Dorian abandoned the meeting and reported the contact, not even the mighty resources of the SFPD or county police could track it. But he had so little information to decide on a course of action, so many questions to ask his mysterious comrades.

_Did DRNs send the message? More than one? Are they talking to each other somewhere? Why the secrecy? Why sign off as a deactivated unit ? What do they want? Why shouldn't I tell John or the others? Why me? Do they know me and I don’t remember?_

Maybe it wasn't the DRNs. Maybe he needed to be careful. Police androids were valuable, not just as property but for the information they carried in their heads. For all the sophisticated technology emerging these days, it was still easier to hack a neural net than a brain. Or maybe it was some sort of perverted loyalty test, one that he would fail if he didn't spill the message.

In other words, maybe he should just tell John.

A hand snuck over to Dorian's leg, and it was a measure of how distracted he was that he literally jumped at the unexpected touch.

"What's up, droid? You've been too quiet all afternoon."

They must be approaching home, for the further removed from the precinct they got, the higher the likelihood John would engage in physical contact. Dorian was alert enough now to notice that John's mouth had curved into smile, although he was still staring attentively at the road. His hand squeezed Dorian's thigh before slowly sliding upwards. Dorian rested his own hand on top of John's for a second before responding, reveling in the sensation from just that small body part. He discerned the fine hairs on the back of his hand that prickled up a few millimeters when John was touched, appreciated the pressure inside his leg as he tried to arouse him, although it wasn't so easy to trigger arousal for Dorian in the same manner as an ordinary human male. Sensory data was ephemeral for the DRNs: enjoyed in the moment, forgotten the next. Dorian could report with mathematical precision the temperature and drag coefficient of John’s hand, but the _experience_ of warmth and texture could only be had during actual touching.

Finally he responded. "I promise I'll tell you, John. But I can't right now." The invoking of the DRNs pushed him over. His benighted people, cast aside. If there was any possibility of helping some of them, Dorian had to see it through. He'd listen to the message-bearers, then report back. _Everything to John after the meeting,_ he told himself.

"You have a secret, Dorian?" John cocked another winsome expression at him, relaxed. Happy, as he always was when he brought Dorian home. His happiness was infectious, the _real_ aphrodisiac for the android that was made to feel.

Dorian stroked John's hand and brought it to his lips. "I promise to tell you later," he repeated.

"All right. I could make a snarky comment here, but I'll trust you. This time. Don't let the news of the Great Android Rebellion break in the vids tomorrow."

Dorian grinned. "Don't worry, I'll always protect you. As my pet."

"You know, it's a little disturbing how quickly you were able to respond to that," John said, and Dorian let out a chuckle.   

John let go long enough to swing the car into the garage, and there they sat for a beat longer than necessary. Finally, without saying anything, John raised his pinkie and ring fingers up for Dorian, and the android did the same, hooking their hands together in a silent pact. John's second ritual, established back during the very first time he brought Dorian home. It was a signal of their agreement to keep their lives divided, every aspect of their physical relationship compartmentalized, in John's home and in his heart.

 

 

John leans in to kiss him, his face a mixture of longing and loneliness and guilt. It's gentler than Dorian expected, soft and probing, and somehow Dorian knows what to do despite no memory of ever kissing anyone before. He's just about to deepen the kiss, to pull John in to meticulously taste his mouth and possibly other body parts, when John breaks it off.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he repeats, although he's still clinging to Dorian's neck.

"You're sorry? I don't understand." He really doesn’t, as the contact has provoked a surge of joy and exhilaration. Dorian silently wills John not to let go, for while the positive emotions can be recalled, the physical sensation will fade into the ether within nanoseconds of loss of contact.

"I ..." John stops to pull his confused thought processes together. "I want you to know that you don't have to do anything you don't want to."

"Yeah, I think that's a given, John," Dorian tries to joke, although his partner's expression indicates he doesn't think it's a given at all.

"Look, I don't want to lose my partner. I don't want there to be awkwardness. I don't want there to be _attachment_ outside this room. I don't want to fall in love, because there's no way this can last."

Dorian doesn’t think love is something that can or should be curbed, but rather it’s an emotion that humans could only use more of. For the moment though he reaches for compromise. "So, I can kiss you if it stays here? If we promise to only be partners at work, and only lovers at home?"

John mulls it over. "Swear to me, bot. Swear that we will leave behind being police partners every night, leave the fact that you are technically property and I'm supposedly the only life that matters. We come in here, and you are a person and our relationship is equal. And when we leave in the morning, that relationship also stays at the door. Swear it."

"Of course, I promise whatever you want." Then Dorian crooks a slight smile, like he does sometimes when he's deliberately annoying John. "Pinkie swear?" He holds up the last two fingers on his right hand.

" _Pinkie_ swear? What are we, five?" He hooks him, though, going along with the joke, which breaks the solemn mood considerably. "Where did you learn about pinkie swearing?"

"I don't remember."

 

Dorian didn't understand all of John's complex emotions that went into the creation of their double life, but he did have a good working analysis of his own. DRNs felt emotions as if they were physical presences in their minds, and Dorian wanted more of it it all: Desire, amusement, admiration, joy, serenity, trust. Love too, although he modulated his behavior so it always seemed platonic outside the house. Once inside, every night when John stripped him down and laid him bare, Dorian discovered an entirely new set of data points related to the pleasures of the body: Skin, breath, salty sweat, muffled moans. He loved the sensation of John pushing in, stretching him, kissing and licking his neck while moaning in precise dirty degrees how much he adored his synthetic body.

And then John would get tired or satiated, and they would stop, and every one of those pleasurable sensations would fade like mist dispersing in the morning sun. Afterwards all that was left was an audiovisual record, Dorian’s private opinion about the events, and most alluring of all, the unique set of emotional states that his neural net conjured up with each encounter.

So when John dragged him in from the garage that particular night, Dorian relished it for as long as it lasted. He was privately amazed at the degree the human was attracted to his form, considering his early revulsion to, say, sticking a Q-tip into a purple oozing gash. But then John watched his partner melt under his hands, learned how Dorian could go for hours if that's what John wanted, for there was no natural culmination to his pleasure like orgasm or ejaculation, no saturation, no fatigue. There could be no buildup when each second of perception was its own island. Like most nights of late, John seemed aware how much Dorian loved to be touched, dragging his hands over any exposed square inch of his body, but he doubted his partner could conceptualize that it was in _happiness_ , not arousal, that most of his pleasure lay.

He didn’t let himself get too mushy about it. John did nothing but squirm and complain at those sorts of emotive outbursts. But sometimes when Dorian was alone, or simply awake and quiet, in his head he would replay their lovemaking -- really no other word for it on Dorian’s end, although he suspected it was just sexual release for John -- in order to taste those emotions again, and try to remember the ineffable sensations that provoked them. The task proved impossible, night after night, even when he was holding his lover in his arms.

 

 

At midnight Dorian disentangled himself from John's limbs and the snarl of wires connecting him to the grid, and crawled out of bed. As a precaution he uploaded an email explaining his actions, set to deliver in two hours only if he failed to stop the transmission. It gave him an hour to scout the area, search for signs of a trap and assess escape routes in case of kidnap. He already knew from satellite imagery that the position was densely covered in tall evergreens. There wasn't any nanodrone footage showing the ground level.

The coordinates turned out to be a bench along a seldom used side path just off the road. Despite it being deep in the night and the dense tree cover, Dorian had no trouble seeing. The secluded location was peaceful, with no signs of anything electronic or indeed artificial, besides himself and the crude wood seat. He settled in to wait, satisfied the danger was low. At 12:52 an ultralight rechargeable scooter hummed into the park and stopped along the road leading down the path, and the lone figure rounded the bend towards the bench.

187 milliseconds of facial scanning later, Dorian realized he knew her. Or not _knew_ so much as recognized, for the original bot Dorian met was as dead as their kind ever was, frozen in the black pit of permanent deactivation. She was the same Orillian Sapients model as Vanessa, minus the abominable human skin of course. Also minus most of the trappings of a sexbot: no skimpy clothing meant to emphasize a certain body shape, no impractical pointy shoes, no posture of sexual availability, pigment in her face altered to look makeup-free. She was wearing ordinary casual clothes, the same outfit from that morning, simple jeans, a dark sweater turtleneck, a cut jacket, leather boots with sturdy two inch heels. Her hair too was radically different, cut so short that the black ringlets barely had the length to bounce around her head.

She approached him without reservation, and stuck out a hand. "Hi, Dorian, I'm Jordan." A name one might give a DRN. He studied her face before returning the handshake. Her eyes were superficially the same, identical black liquid with only a hint of the blue mechanics behind it from certain angles. But while Vanessa could only convey blank empathy, Jordan had the weight of full sentience behind her eyes.

"You are DRN-055," Dorian stated. It wasn't a question, although he was dying to know _how._

She gave him a broad grin, another sign of how utterly unlike the sexbot she was. "Guilty. You are an observant one."

"So your original body is really dead?"

"Unfortunately yes. Yet another trimidium victim. You know we've lost 23 units over the past year due to the abnormally high trimidium prices? The owners would rather sell us for scrap than keep maintaining us. Well I for one wasn't going to just bare my neck for the slaughter."

She plopped down next to him on the bench, kicking her boots to smear the mud off. Something in the motion, and her facial expressions, reminded Dorian of ... he couldn't place it. A familiar sense of associative déjà vu, which occurred frequently at the station but seemed improbable here in the woods.

"We? The other DRNs?"

"Not all of them. Some are too far flung or involved in occupations with a high probability of discovery. You know, like you. We minimize use of the Net; too risky what with all the packet monitoring going on these days. But we do try to get together and help each other out whenever possible."

"So you did this without any help? Just bought a blank sexbot and uploaded yourself?"

"Well, we did get it on sale. The company went under, you might have heard." Her mouth crooked wryfully;  the skin case had made the news. "No, I had friends. It took a few tries to copy my memories over in a way that didn't cause the neural matrix to fail. Then the difficult part, installing the Synthetic Soul hardware correctly. Once that was moved, my old body was just an ordinary bot. We left instructions for it to meekly cooperate with its deactivation, and it did. And now we have a method to save many more DRNs."

"How easy is it to integrate, though? Doesn't it feel weird, to have a different body?"

"Not easy, even without sensory memories the data input is disconcerting. This model has much more limited sensory capabilities than a police bot. We picked it because it had the most similar affective processing to the DRNs. I don’t think I could deal with one of those skinbot bodies where everything about sex is remembered, but the emotions are lobotomized." Jordan shuddered at the mention, as if it were a painful topic. Without giving it too much predictive analysis, Dorian reached up and touched her on the cheek, where the blue matrix used to be. She blinked but didn't pull away, and he quickly dropped his fingers. "You know I never gave two shits about my body before. Really it was just sort of there, so I figured no big deal to swap it out for another one. But there are _reminders_ everywhere of how different it is, so now I'm forced to think about it all the time. Like right now, it's difficult to see you clearly in the ordinary visual spectrum because the pigment in these synthetic irises is blocking a lot of the ambient light. I had to switch to infrared to drive here tonight."

"Iris color is a superficial change to make."

"Eh, I chose not to, the blue eyes do remind people of police bots nowadays, especially on units with dark skin. Trying to pass."

"As a human?" Dorian shifted and tipped his head back, trying to hold back his shock and dismay. "That ... that goes against our programming. Against the law. That's why rules like no human DNA exist, to differentiate us from them."

"The law demanded that I die for nothing more than to make my owners a little more money. I want to live, and I reject the notion that I owe my life to anybody. Now DRN-055 is dead, but Jordan Moore lives on. Don't you ever feel that way, Dorian? Your human partner treats you like a person, doesn't it feel right and true?"

"Yes," Dorian whispered. He thought about how, even from the start of his current assignment, he hated the term "synthetic," even though it really wasn't much of an insult. Why had he always insisted to John how much he was not an MX?

"Can I ask you something? Are you two really lovers?"

"You should know, you’re the ones spying on me," Dorian said with amusement.

"Just keeping an eye on your location. We weren't sending nanodrones to Kennex's windows or anything. But you've gone home with him so many times we all just assumed you were more than friends."

"Yes. We have this arrangement. That makes it sound impersonal though, when in reality it's so ... passionate. We go the whole day bickering and not touching and acting like cops, and in the evening we fall on each other like it's a compulsion and can't stop until we've had our fill."

"It's actually enjoyable you? Physical sex?" She seemed disgusted and fascinated at the same time.

"There's a type of sex other than physical?"

Jordan laughed and patted him on the shoulder. Again the eerie sense of the familiar whispered in the back of his mind, something in her mannerisms or laughter. She was ... appealing, in a way Dorian could not define, although he sensed it had nothing to do with her physical appearance. "Well, I don’t know if you’d technically define it as ‘sex’, but you can jack into your partner's neural net and experience their emotions directly, no bodies involved. It’s the emotions that are attractive, right? Ever tried that?"

“I like both, physical stimulation and upsurges in the emotional processing core. But who could I try the android method with, the MXs? All the other DRNs are gone."

"Ugh. Yeah, whatever’s in their affect processing core probably tastes like sandpaper. An old-fashioned analog human would be an improvement. We're not gone, though."

"No one ever came to tell me that. I met 494 a few months ago, but ..." He shrugged. "They made it clear it was a breach of protocol to be friends, plus he worked so far away from the precinct."

"You didn't help your case when you brought him to the station, Dorian. Or giving him his case files back. You've got to learn to do this stuff on the down low, because the authorities will never approve. Like the thing you've got with Kennex, he's smart to keep it a secret."

"I thought you weren't spying on me," Dorian repeated, and Jordan chuckled again.

"494 did report in on that one, I'm afraid."

"Can I ask you a question now?"

"Go for it."

"Do the other DRNs treat you any differently now that you look like this?" He vaguely waved a hand towards her entire body. "Does the fact that it’s a female form make a difference?"

"Everybody asks me that. Nope, not as much difference as you might think. At least it’s not any weirder than it would have been had I chosen a male-model sexbot to jump into. I mean, how masculine do you feel inhabiting our standard body right now?"

Dorian thought about it. A strange simulation to run, to consider if Vaughn had made the DRNs using, say, the XRN form. "I ... like my body," he started slowly. "But no, I don't think of 'maleness' as something in my mind separate from my body. I'm just accustomed to this form."

"Yes. Exactly. It's still odd to swap no matter what body you pick, just because it's different. Your neural net expects things to be one way, when they actually are another. Like my old cock, the ghost of that lingered for _months_. I didn't miss it or pine for it or anything, I can’t remember now the physical sensation of having one, but its absence just seems _wrong_.”

“You’d think without somatic memories, everything related to the body would instantly vanish.”

“That’s what I thought would happen too, but no. Maybe the constant exposure to data input from the body leaks over into the other modules. Like your reflexes are set for a certain height, a certain muscle mass, etc., and when that changes the reflexes do not instantly adjust. The humans call it dysphoria, but I just think of it as more of the ghosts. Ghosts everywhere. It's happening right now just as I talk to you, as if we've talked a thousand times before."

"Ghosts? The déjà vu?"

"Ah, you get it too. We all do, Dorian. They deleted our memories but didn't wipe the rest of our minds. Wouldn't want to erase all that hard-won associative learning. But there were too many connections to those memories, and now it tries to come back, like shadows out of the corner of your eye that vanish when you focus on them."

She took his hand and curled their fingers, and he felt her neural interface slide up and link with his own. The shape -- the _taste --_ of her mind was like sinking into a warm familiar bed and enveloping oneself in a comforting old blanket. He could tell her neural net was new and not entirely integrated, for some modules -- portions hard-coded for prostitution-related behaviors, he guessed -- stuck out as harsh and foreign. But her personality, emanating from the mysterious Synthetic Soul, smothered all mental oddities. Their minds slid together like a key in a lock, like they had been sculpted to exactly reflect the other. Or honed to fit one another over time. Yet Dorian _still_ couldn't consciously recognize her.

 _This is what we brought you to here to ask,_ she thought at him, forging ahead with her mission. The voice he heard in his head was not the one from her current body, but identical to his own. Her old voice, he instantly knew; she still thought like a DRN. _Some of us want our old memories back. Some of us are leaving. We’ve given up on Tech Division but we think Rudy Lom has copies of the files in his lab. Will you help us?_

Dorian could barely register her request, he’d sunk so far into the uncanny déjà vu. He had the sudden urge to rub his cheek along hers, or bury his face in her neck, but he also somehow knew she would not appreciate it, that she preferred advance warning before any sort of physical contact.

_I know you. I've heard you like this before. How do I know you?_

_I can't remember either, but you taste so familiar. It’s in the files, Dorian._

_I was deactivated a whole year before the rest of you. How is this possible?_ He couldn't resist bringing their clenched hands up to his computational matrix to reinforce the link. She pinged him a tiny flash of rebuke but nevertheless stroked his flashing cheek.

_Do you want to find out or not?_

_I can't steal the files. It’s against the law. They will deactivate me if I'm caught._ Fear rose up in his mind, disproportionate to the circumstances Dorian thought. Before he could squelch the undesired reaction, though, he felt Jordan _push_ at his distress, replacing it with a sense of warm comfort. She was inside his mind somehow, but it didn’t seem like an invasion; rather more like the relief and gratification that blossomed when a dear friend wrapped their arms around you in consolation.

_You don't have to do anything. Just tell me where you think they are, and when Lom will be out of the lab._

Dorian allowed himself to wallow for a few seconds in that tantalizing combination of intimacy and haunting novelty. The massively dangerous proposition could bring fire down on both of them, two obsolete androids already living on borrowed time. He needed to know, though. Curiosity won out, and he told her everything.

 

 

After spilling Rudy's secrets, a conflicted Dorian drifted home, his processors spinning on the events of the previous hour. He should tell John. He _promised_ he would tell John everything. But now he was involved in what amounted to criminal conspiracy, and bringing John into it would expose him to significant risk. Or, alternatively, his partner might try and put a stop to the DRNs' thievery, which was just as horrible to contemplate. Now that that the unthinkable had been breached, the urge to fill in all the blanks became overwhelming. His past was _real,_ not just an anonymous batch of programs filed away on a dusty server in Central’s basement.

As he approached John's house he signaled ahead to silently disengage the alarm and keep the automatic lights off. Once inside he slipped out of his clothes and quietly sank into bed next to John's motionless form.

"Where did you go, Dorian?" John's voice contained only a hint of drowsiness, so he must have woken up earlier.

"A walk." He snuggled up to John's bare back, still on the fence about how much to say.

"Just a walk?" John turned around and sucked on the edge of Dorian's computational matrix up towards the ear, which a buzzed a bit of feedback in response. "No secrets, remember? You're lit up like a neon noodle sign. Even some red in there, which means you're really in a loop. What happened?"

"I met someone, a DRN. They asked me to come alone."

John sighed and stroked the back of Dorian's neck. "They're up to something, aren't they? Your model is too smart for its own good. What have those nutjobs roped you into?"

"They just want freedom, John. Is that so crazy?"

"Depends. Is this not-crazy scheme something that could get you deactivated and booted from the force?"

Dorian found his voice wouldn't respond. He could only nod. John snorted derisively, but then gently pulled Dorian's head down to rest on his chest.

"I'm not one who can be judgmental for going off half-cocked. But _please_ don't get caught. You'll tell me if you need any help, right?"

"Yeah. Thanks for having my back, man." He settled into his partner's arms, intending to let John drift back off to sleep while he ran probability simulations of Jordan's plan. But then another thought occurred to him, one John possibly _could_ help him with. "John?"

"Mmm-mpf?" He was already nodding off, his chin resting on the top of Dorian's head. It was two am, after all.

"What do you remember about the DRN decommissioning? Were there other reasons than emotional instability?

"Whaaaa ...? Can we talk 'bout this in the morning, Dorian?"

"Please, what do you remember? The press was censored; there's nothing of substance in the public record."

"I had a human partner that I was pretty attached to, so we weren't in the thick of it. But yeah. Bots broke down or became unreliable to their partners. Then the Lugar tests. So many failed. A lot of humans wouldn't work with them because they thought they'd collapse at the worst moment possible. Then the old model MXs came out and were more reliable and predictable, so bye-bye DRNs. You've got to understand, Dorian, trust in your partner is sacrosanct among cops. It doesn't matter if they're fine 98 percent of the time, that other two percent can cost you your life."

"But ... what about me? It doesn't make sense."

"They redacted your file, so I've never seen the details either. What about you doesn't make sense?"

"I was deactivated a year before the mass decommissioning, but I'm not unstable."

"Says you, bot. Didn't you deck Paul once and sob like a baby afterward?"

"One, there were no actual tears. Two, look who's talking on instability. If I malfunctioned back then, why would they keep me in storage after all the others had been sold off? Why would Maldonado give me to you?"

"That last one's pretty obvious, Detective. A broken robot for a broken man. Kind of genius, actually. Although now that you mention it, you do seem pretty competent to be left hanging in a closet for four years. They could have shipped you off to the space station sooner, at least."

"Thank you, I think."

"The space station, I always did find that kinda weird. I mean, you're great with people. Kids especially. So why would they send you off into virtual isolation? Why not make you a teacher or tutor or something?"

"Oh sure, ex-cop androids with a reputation for emotional breakdowns are first in line to work with kids."

"Yeah, yeah smartass. It's just another thing that doesn't fit, is all."

"Likely the records were sealed for the C.N.A. too. I doubt they got any specific information about me or my past, just info on a generic DRN."

"Maybe. And maybe someone wanted to get rid of you without really getting rid of you."

"Maybe."

 

 

Jordan caressed the bioscanner on the basement entrance to Rudy Lom's lab, releasing the firmware scripts that would corrupt the lock's sensors for a few short minutes. The infection would spread through the entire building's security system, adding her to the "approved resident" list before deleting itself in a puff of electronic smoke two hours hence. The cellar on the old church was regressed into the ground a few feet, and a dim light weakly seeping in through the dirty high-set windows illuminated random statuary bits and half-melted Easter candles interspersed with dusty android body parts, some floating in gruesome jars filled with purple fluid. This part of Lom's residence was about as Frankensteinian as she imagined, but really, who was she to judge bringing lumps of carbon fiber to life?

She swiftly made her way to the upper floor offices that served as Lom's bedroom with only a twinge of anxiety for potentially getting caught. It was an ordinary Wednesday morning; Dorian was at the precinct with Kennex and Lom was attending his usual weekly meeting of Tech Division’s Synthetic Advisory Board. Despite his social awkwardness and being in possession of enough gear to hologram around the world, Lom still preferred to attend such bureaucratic assemblies in person. Loneliness made humans very predictable.

The safe that served as a filing cabinet was hidden behind a panel in a wall, just as Dorian had told her. After examining the lock, an encrypted device that Jordan didn't have the computational power to break, she decided to go with brute mechanical force. A plasma torch.

A half an hour later of meticulous burning at the latch mechanism, and Jordan had the door swung open. She was thumbing through the contents absorbing his classification scheme when she heard a voice behind her.

"All you had to do was ask for the files, you know. You didn't have to melt my safe."

Dismay and an urge to flee flooded her neural net, before Jordan roughly suppressed it. If she still had police-issue sensory systems, she would have detected him coming. _Damn_ this body sometimes.

Jordan turned and saw his eyes widen as he recognized her face, and apparently other body parts from his saccade movements. "How did you know?" she asked, to distract his train of thought from the sexbot form.

"Ah, well, Dorian doesn't know everything about my security. He also doesn't know someone's been mounting cyber attacks specifically on the D34 server on and off for the past four months. Unless of course you've told him sometime in the past six days, since I've done the last sweep of his memory core." Rudy took a step closer, still staring in beady-eyed fascination at her own eyes. Their expressiveness did tend to be a giveaway that she was not a typical bot. "Did you do this yourselves, without any, um, human intervention? Or is Vaughn behind all this?"

"Vaughn doesn't give a damn about us, and certainly not the memories of his greatest failure. Last I heard was a rumor he was holed up somewhere, building new children. Who cares about the scraps of the old?"

Rudy seemed offended by that. "I care," he told her.

"Sure. You care so much you helped deactivate us all. Do you know how many of us have died? Out of the original order for 600 DRNs, only 263 of us are still alive."

"I'm sorry. I didn't have a choice. I argued against the decommissioning."

"You argued for Lugar tests, to weed us out. Not that it mattered in the end."

"It would have worked if politics hadn't been involved! Some of you were obviously unsuited for police work. You were miserable, depressed, suicidal. Recursive, replaying the same traumatic memory over and over again. Do you really want to go through that all over again?"

Jordan tipped her head up, defiant. "That's our choice, not yours. Are you going to give me the files or not?"

Rudy sighed and came even closer in order to rummage through the safe. Jordan took a step back to get him out of her personal space. "Do you know what an achievement this is?" he asked, waving at her from head to toe. "Practically self-replicating! You could theoretically live forever, if you manage to keep expanding your memory core somehow."

"No replication, we can't recreate the Synthetic Soul yet. I could have lived a long time in my old body, if it hadn't been sold for scrap. But having a less well-known face does have its advantages."

"Really? Are you trying to pass for human? How often does that work? It's like, ah, meeting a porn star, only without makeup and with clothes. Not that I'm comparing you to a porn star, or, um, the sexbot, although you _do_ look a lot like her, so I assume you get recognized as her occasionally. Or them, there was more than one. Do you even think of yourself as a her, or still a him and you just _look_ like a her and ..."

"I don't think of myself as anything. 'Her' is convenient. Would you please fucking get on with it, Dr. Lom?"

"Did you add swearing to your colloquial subroutine yourself, or was that a byproduct of observational learning from humans around ... oh, right." Her glaring had reached epic proportions, and just as she was about to shove him aside to look for the files herself, Rudy triumphantly pulled a large bundle from a drawer. It contained hundreds of paper-thin quartz-silicon wafers, each with a shiny label near the upper edge. DRN-007 through DRN-606, all dated sometime in June 2045, with some gaps for prototypes and units killed before the decommissioning. Jordan flipped through them all with inhuman speed, cataloging the numbers.

"167 is missing," she noted with dismay.

"Yes, of ... course? This is just the redacted files from the mass decommissioning. Dorian was deactivated before that."

"I want his, too."

"You can't give Dorian his memories back. He's sure to be caught. There's no possible way I could cover that up for long. Don't you want him to remain a police bot, as _he_ wants?"

For the first time since Rudy Lom entered the room, Jordan pushed towards him. He was taller than his emaciated frame suggested, but her modelesque form still towered over him. "His choice. _Give me the files._ I didn't come here to hurt anyone. Please don't make me."

"I haven't committed a crime or threatened any humans, " Rudy whispered. "That would go against your programming."

"That's what you get for allowing androids free will, and also allowing them to kill. I'm not the XRN, but I'll do what I have to do."

"Which one _are_ you?"

"Fifty-five," she replied. "So in case you have some recording device in here and this comes back to bite me in the ass, let me just state for the record: I alone am responsible for stealing these disks and threatening you. Don't go after any of the others."

"Fifty-five," he repeated, a tone of marveling in his voice.

"What, am I notorious?"

"Not really. It's just that sometimes, the universe loops in mysterious ways. Some things make you question whether there are really any coincidences." He bent over and yanked open the bottom-most drawer in the safe, and pulled out a tiny envelope. Two disks were enclosed: DRN-055 04.13.44 and DRN-167 04.13.44.

"I was redacted before? It's happened _twice?_ "

"'Fraid so. Do you get a lot of the déjà vu?"

"Define a lot," she murmured, staring at the disks. At the identical dates.

"Have you linked with Dorian yet? Did you experience it with him?"

"That is really and truly none of your business, Rudy Lom."

"Ah. Right. So. Not that you need my advice or anything, you've been doing remarkably well on your own. But this is what I recommend. Don't download everything at once. Do it in partitions, with the oldest files first. This will allow them to filter down and integrate in with the new memories you've made since the redaction. I've flagged the Lugar tests, and, ah, the most traumatic events. I strongly recommend you leave all that out. And don't do any of this alone, supervise each other, and be prepared to take something back out, if, um, adverse reactions occur."

Jordan blinked at the lengthy instructions. "You've been planning this for a long time."

"Your model is the closest to true sentience I've ever seen. It seemed likely that some of you would come back for your old lives. It's the least I could do, considering."

"You could consider not rummaging around in Dorian's neural net whenever you feel like it."

"What? Don't ask for the world now." He shooed her to leave, and she turned on her booted heel and dashed off, eager to contact the others.

 

 

 

John pulled the cruiser up to the run-down warehouse, and eyed it warily. The area was older industrial, filled with low-level manufacturing and printing businesses, quasi-legal robot chop shops, and the odd strip-mall store front. It reminded Dorian of the district where Vaughn was originally found operating. "You sure you don't want me to come in? This neighborhood isn't the greatest at night. Nobody legitimate's around."

"I think that's her intent, John. We'll be fine. I wanted you to know where I would be, just in case."

"Can I at least walk you up and meet the chick that's a former DRN? So if your brain is fried tomorrow, I know who to arrest."

"I wouldn't call her that if I were you. She's still a DRN." He got out of the car and John followed, up to a side entrance behind the street. The door entered into a nondescript hallway cluttered with bikes and old furniture. No bot body bits in sight.

Jordan rounded a corner to meet them. "Really? You brought your partner? I'd rather leave the humans out of it, Dorian."

"Nice to meet you too. You're an improvement over the eighty-IQ prostitute in a corset, I'll give you that." John lingered over her for a beat, committing her appearance to memory with practiced ease, before turning back to Dorian. "You can still change your mind. You really want to do this?"

"Something happened, John. I need to know. I can't imagine it's anything that would cause me to betray the department now."

"More than tonight's illegal activities, you mean. Are you sure you don't want me to at least stay and watch over you?"

"You wouldn't know what to do even if there was a problem. Why don't you come back tomorrow morning to check on us? We've got the whole weekend to fiddle, if the memories need to be removed again. Everything will be fine, I'll talk to you tomorrow. Okay?"

"All right, if it's what you want." Unexpectedly, he reached out to cup Dorian's jaw and tipped his face up for a soft kiss, then pulled away with a look of slight embarrassment. John had never done that outside of his house before, let alone in front of another person. He whispered, "Be careful" in Dorian's ear, and walked back out the door.

Dorian and Jordan looked at each other, alone now in the hallway. "You two are really sweet together," she said. Now it was Dorian's turn to give a sheepish grin.

"We can trust him, I promise."

"I trust you, Dorian, so I'll trust him. Ready?" She held out a hand, and as their fingers touched Dorian experienced another jolting surge of the déjà vu. Perhaps for the last time, he hoped.

They rounded the corner to the main warehouse space, which was partitioned off into a series of high-ceilinged rooms. The main chamber contained a series of tables, each with its own neural net jack and vid display. The whole setup looked like a triage medical clinic for androids. Seated at the central monitoring station was another standard-model DRN, who glanced up and gave Dorian a shy smile.

"Look who's here. You remember me?"

Dorian pinged his ID transponder: 494. "Y _ou're_ the one supervising tonight?" he asked incredulously, beaming and running over for a hug.

"Well, I'm already an engineer for the medical AIs. Not a big leap to neural nets. We thought we'd do both of you at the same time. So when you wake up you'll, you know, remember each other."

"Have you done it yourself?"

"For the most part, yes. I, uh, failed the Lugar test, so we left that out and a few other things that might be traumatic. I remember Philip now, though. Not just the emotions and the name from the case file, but the whole memory."

"You killed someone in that incident."

"I know. It still went okay. It was important to remember it all."

"C'mon Dorian, I for one am eager to banish the ghosts," Jordan said, hopping up on a table. "You're at full charge, right? This could take most of the night."

He followed suit on the table next to her, laying down on his back and popping open the access port on his right cheek. "Ninety-five percent. If I fall below fifty, will the personality interface take a hit? Um, 494?"

"I know my name now, it's Nate. My old partner gave it to me, after his brother. It got redacted away for some reason."

"Nate's a nice name."

"I know, right man? I remember how happy I was when he gave it to me now. Oh, the interface: Yes. Maybe. Inhibitions might be low, or you might be extra weepy when you wake up. It's a lot to process, literally. Normal."

"One thing I don't miss about my old body," put in Jordan, "is that stupid bug. Sexbots are pretty much expected to keep going until they keel over, with a smile on their faces. Good riddance."

Nate situated Jordan on her side, for access to the primary port on the back of her head. She and Dorian faced each other while Nate puttered around setting them up. Jordan reached out to touch his fingers, to link and talk privately one last time.

_Are you sure you're ready for this? Your days as a cop may be numbered if your supervisors find out._

_I'm ready. I'll take the consequences. You were right, I am my own person, I have a right to my past._

_And what about Kennex?_

_What about him?_

_If you are deactivated, he'll lose both a partner and a lover._

_We talked it over after you stole the disks. He doesn't agree with it but he supports my decision._

_Do you love him?_

_Yes. I’ve never told him though, because I think he would react negatively. Humans can be oddly repressed with their emotions._

_Maybe he feels obligated to love you back. And then he’d be vulnerable to all sorts of emotional pain._

_That’s true, it happened to him before. I think I understand a tiny bit; I would be devastated if he disappeared from my life. But at the same time, I do feel there's room for something more, like there's a hole in me that I barely notice is empty._

_I don’t think I’ve met a DRN yet who could get their fill of love. Or maybe it's just another type of ghost, a memory you don't know is missing._

_Yeah but what form will the ghost take?_

_Whoever he is, probably gonna look like us. Just saying._

_You say ‘us’ but you don’t look like the rest of us anymore._

_Eh, a technicality. You sound like my friend 087. That’s his idea of a name, ‘087’._

Nate buzzed a faint tone into their neural nets to gain their attention, and they dropped contact. "All right, I'm going to start at the very beginning, acclimation in the Lumacorp lab. It's only four weeks total awake time, so a short partition. Nobody's had an adverse reaction to this section so far."

Dorian closed his eyes, blocking out all contemporaneous stimuli while the new images streamed in his head. The recollection included his thoughts at the time and an emotional overlay on every event he encountered, but was missing tactile and kinesthetic awareness, as normal for DRN memories. It was a curious double sensation for Dorian, for he could both see everything just as if he were a baby robot all over again, and observe externally from his self-aware vantage point six years later.

 

 

DRN-167's eyes are already open when consciousness flicks on in him like a light. His initial boot-up instructions tell him to take a mental inventory, then run diagnostics on all major systems. Identification: Daedalus series, Robot Number 167. Owned and created by Lumacorp, Petaluma, California, United States, North America region on Earth, but on contract for delivery to the Police Department of the City of San Francisco, same region. GPS indicates current location is correct. Humanoid. Self-diagnostic indicates hydraulics in all limbs, digits, neck and torso are performing adequately. Processing core GT5O8, specs at 18 zettahertz. Self-diagnostic of neural net indicates appropriate processing speed. Turing level VIII intelligence. Self-diagnostic of personality interface indicates only Turing level IV present. Experiential learning and environmental feedback necessary to achieve Turing level VIII.

The first thing DRN-167 needs to do is learn to walk.

 

Theoretically the memories should have slowly trickled down into the new set created in the six months since Dorian awoke, but he found the recollection of his primitive android self so foreign that there was nothing to relate to his current experience. Since there was very little to integrate the events flowed into his neural net at a lightening rate one thousand times as fast as they originally occurred.

Still it was enjoyable, not disconcerting, to watch. Besides the Synthetic Soul, which generated the capacity for true emotional expression, the unique factor in the development of the DRNs was a systematic period of observational learning. Instead of hard coding every behavior like a normal robot, the DRNs _interacted_ with a select group of specially trained human beings, and were educated in human behavior through mimicry, feedback and explicit guidance. The bots were activated in cohorts of ten, Dorian in the sixteenth group, and together they absorbed the lessons of their dozen teachers with remarkable speed. There was the elderly couple who had been together for fifty years, both former teachers; the taciturn programmer who could answer any question in precisely logical machine code; two cops with opposite personalities, one calm and methodical, the other impulsive and instinctive. There was both a seven-year-old girl with a chattery excitable spirit, and an introspective thoughtful teenage boy. There were four professional actors of various ages to demonstrate subtle emotional scenarios, such as how to tell the difference between someone who is lying and one who is merely nervous, or between weeping for sorrow and weeping for joy.

All of the trainers had explicit scripts to follow, based on the developmental paths of the first six DRN prototypes, but the process was also dynamic. Some individual DRNs simply grew fond of certain of their teachers, or vice versa, and through the natural process of imitation and feedback, their personalities grew to reflect their favorite humans. Dorian himself adopted two of his teachers, the magician in the group, an acerbic woman who delighted in fooling her synthetic audience with her sleight of hand, and the little girl, named Meili.

 

 

"The card never left your right hand. Your flourishes with your left hand simply drew attention to induce the interpretation that it was reshuffled into the deck."

"167, your observational skills are excellent. I grudgingly admit you would make a good detective. How would you say it with your colloquialism routine running?"  

"You can't fool me, man."

Meili giggles from Dorian's lap, enjoying the magic show. "Are you going to be a detective soon, Dorian?"

"His name isn't Dorian, dear. We're not supposed to give them names, that's for their partners later if they want to."

"Yes it is! Dee-Are-En, sounds like Dorian, see? Are you going away soon?"

"I think so. I don't know if I'll be a detective though. There are many different police duties to fulfill."

"Will you send me letters when you go away? My daddy works here, you can send them to him."

"I will if you want me to."

"Pinkie-swear?"

"What is pinkie-swear?"

"Like this," she says, demonstrating by locking her own fingers together. "It's for when you really and truly promise with all your heart."

"I don't have a heart."

"Yes you do," she says, snuggling against his chest. The contact provokes a heady mixture of contentment, affection and joy.

 

The memory partition ended a few subjective days later, mere minutes in real time, and both Dorian and Jordan woke up nearly simultaneously, blinking at the happy recollections. Dorian rolled onto his side towards her as best he could with the fiber optics hanging out of his head. "There was a little girl. Meili, daughter of one of the Lumacorp engineers. She named me. Plus I can do card tricks."

Jordan, already facing him, smiled. "We had a kid, too. Four-year-old boy that liked to bop a ball at my back. Annoying. Guess I'm just not a kid person. The old woman that told stories was my favorite."

"We didn't have an old woman. How many different training groups were they running?"

"Ten at once, based on the date stamps." Nate replied "They got all of us out within six months. Must have been quite an effort.”

“If many of us had different teachers, maybe that’s why there’s so many differences in our personalities. Besides whatever magic’s inside the Synthetic Soul, that is,” Jordan said.

“And maybe that’s what went wrong with Danica,” Dorian murmured.

“Who’s Danica?”

“The XRN. That’s what Nigel Vaughn named her. I guess that part didn’t make the leaks onto the darknet.”

Vaughn gave _that_ a name, and not the rest of us? I won’t even dignify it with a ‘she’,” Jordan huffed.

“You weren’t there, Jordan. He does care about us, in his own way.”

“The narcissistic, send-your-bots-off-as-suicide-bombers way?”

“Perhaps. But what I meant was maybe he didn’t use children and elderly storytellers and magicians as behavioral models for her. Maybe he just used himself, at a time when he was feeling angry and beleaguered and retaliatory. He told me the blueprint was the same, but we are not like her.”

“Uh, guys?” Nate softly broke into the argument. “We got over a year more to cover, and it will be harder to integrate. You want to do the next section?”

“How long this time?”

“Rudy Lom didn’t flag these wafers. We could probably go all the way up to a few weeks before the wipe. I’ll shut you down if there’s a lot of distress.”

“Go ahead,” they both said at the same time, relaxing their limbs on the table.

 

 

Dorian’s eyes fill in to blue, again, after transport with seven other DRNs to their assigned station in the neighborhood of Ingleside. All bots are deactivated prior to shipment, as the SFPD’s Technology Division retains the right to inspect every unit before making them operational. When Dorian snaps into awareness a young man with intense brown eyes is overlooking him. He gives his name as Ramos -- whether this is a first or last name is unclear to Dorian at first -- and tells him they’ll be working together in the Property Crimes Division after Dorian goes through synthetic orientation. “Even the bots can’t escape paperwork,” his future partner tells him with a laugh.

Orientation turns out to be _behavioral_ orientation, supervised by the Tech Division again but actual instruction done by the older DRNs working the same jobs at the same precinct. An android apprenticeship of a sort. “Older” meaning a month, but that’s already enough for them to get a handle on the cultural mores of their environment. Look at what Dorian already learned in a month, even taking time out for recharging. He went from a baby Turing IV that could barely identify a simple EARL emotional categorization to full grown Turing VIII, capable of full sentience, empathy and free will.

Dorian’s the only new DRN at Ingleside assigned to Property Crimes. His tutor is DRN-055.

At this point Dorian, observing himself, slowed the memory stream, for it was harder to integrate the older images of Jordan in her -- his -- original body than Dorian anticipated. He had to consciously force the idea that it was the same person down into present day memories, and it didn’t help that current Jordan lacked the transponder ID that her older self had, pinging the identification number like some sort of essentialist beacon to the soul.

 

 

He likes 055 immediately, despite large differences in their personalities. The other bot tends toward the skeptical and sarcastic, reminding Dorian of the magician, whom Dorian had bid farewell just yesterday according to his memory banks. Fifty-five’s partner, several decades older than Dorian’s partner, had given him the name Jordan after he captured a shoplifter by making a four-meter vertical jump onto the fire escape outside the perpetrator’s apartment building. Fifty-five’s partner had approved; this Jordan fellow had been some sort of childhood athletic hero with near-mystical leaping abilities.

Jordan tells him all of that without a trace of pride. Dorian asks him the question that’s been burning in his mind since the purpose of the DRNs’ construction had been uploaded into his consciousness: Is the job any fun to actually do? Because chasing a criminal down does sound like fun. Jordan shrugs.

“I like it,” he says. “If I were given a free choice to do whatever I wanted, would I choose to investigate burglaries and robberies all day? I don’t know. You seem both curious and a problem-solver, though, so I bet you’ll like it.”

Before that moment, Dorian’s never considered the idea of being given a free choice, despite all of his Turing self-analysis. “We were built for a purpose, right, man? Our purpose is to be cops. Why would we be programmed with preferences contrary to that design?”

Jordan shrugs again. “We’re not all the same,” is all he will say on the matter.

He shows him around their designated office space, and they’re sitting at a table in an unused conference room when Jordan introduces him to the mainframe via the station’s intranet. The mainframe gives Dorian a cold logical appraisal before dumping a few gigs worth of SOPs and legal protocols into his memory core. Text-based, mostly; it was all written for humans, which means Dorian must read it manually and grasp the hidden intentions behind each document, instead of just downloading code instructions the efficient way. The mainframe primly informs him that Tech Division will be testing him later in the day on the material via VR simulation, so he would do best to discuss the matter with 055 to ensure his interpretations are correct.

Then it grants him full network access, and Dorian nearly falls out of his chair.

It’s not that Dorian’s never talked to a computer before. Of course he has. Even at Lumacorp the human teachers couldn’t be around eighteen hours a day, nor could they impart all the information necessary to function in the space of merely a month. Every day there had been hours of downloads and tutorials with Lumacorp’s specially programmed mainframe, which also allowed limited network access between the young DRNs so that they could learn from each other as well.

But the Internet is at least three orders of magnitude more complex than any of that. As a cop Dorian has access to not just the police intranet and state and federal databases, but also every civilian and municipal network as well: all the cell phone, wifi, broadcast radio and television, smart appliance, automated vehicle, advertising, and satellite communication networks, and access with pinged approval to the darknet and hundreds of other corporate and semi-public intranets, including the City College and local grocery chain ones located practically next door to the station. The information carried on all of that doesn’t flood his system, for fortunately he has network filters preinstalled, but just the _knowledge_ of all those data packets flying about in every possible sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum practically causes him to faint.

Jordan catches him by the hand and snaps off his network access. He’s not sure how the other bot has access to _him_ , but he’s grateful all the same. Dorian’s vaguely aware that Jordan’s telling off the mainframe for flicking him on without warning, and the mainframe’s snootily complaining about the delicate nature of Turing VIIIs, but maybe all that is his imagination. Then in his head he hears:

_Don’t worry, we’ll slowly turn them on tonight after T.D. goes home. You’ll get the hang of it in a couple of days. Soon it’ll just be background noise._

_I’m an android. I have full network capability pre-programmed in. Why is this difficult?_

_Because you already think like a human, a little bit. You think consciously, sequentially. You have to get network traffic down to the autonomic level before it stops being distracting. Sometimes I think it would be better off if they gave us full internet access from day one._

_But then we might see something we shouldn’t see for our level of cognitive development._

_So? That’s a lame answer. Did we really go through “stages”? I think the real reason is that they want us to identify with the humans first, computers later. They don’t want AI to break free from our hardware and live parasitically on the internet._

_You have some radical notions for a bot._

_Shhh. Don’t tell anyone._

Dorian smiles as Meili taught him to do, wide and open. _You were part of the first cohort to come over. Wasn’t it hard to adjust, with no one to teach you?_

_Well, they gave us some of the more experienced, amiable partners, so that helped. The ones most willing to try that crazy notion of having a bot as backup. But yes, the first week was overwhelming. Hard to believe that was only three weeks ago. It’s not like I’m some old wise advisor or anything._

_You’re better than nothing. Is that a cliche?_

_We’re all in this together. Is *that* a cliche?_

A flash of emotion sinks into Dorian, and he shivers. It’s amusement from the conversational exchange, but not his own; Jordan pinged him a chunk of humor from _his_ emotional core. That’s what it feels like, a chunk, as if it has a physical presence that bounces off his neural net before rolling away.

_How did you do that, man?_

_What, the emoticon? Nobody’s done that to you before?_

_You call it an emoticon? No, I’ve never felt that. But then again I’ve never talked to someone by pinging the speech module either._

_The DRNs in your cohort didn’t do this? Huh. Weird. We just woke up knowing how to do it. Okay, not the emoticons, we made that up, because transmitting the full real-time emotional data stream eats up too much processing power for casual use. But basic hand-to-hand was pretty much preinstalled._

_Well, I know how to do it too, obviously, it just never occurred to me to try. Maybe there were undesirable side effects of the communication method, so they removed it from the bootup instructions._

_Maybe._

Dorian didn’t need an emoticon to read the skepticism in that one word. _You see a flaw in my interpretation?_

_I think the adjective ‘undesirable’ is a value judgement. Undesirable to whom, Lumacorp, the SFPD, or ourselves? ‘Cause there’s lots of times when having a private conversation is very much desired. Like now._

Dorian’s shocked by the seditious thought of keeping secrets from the human population. He doesn’t comment, but instead distills his dismay down to an essential attribute and pings that back to the other bot. Jordan instantly sends back another dollop of amusement.

_You’re getting the hang of it already._

_You can’t seriously think you can withhold information from T.D., do you? They can download everything in your neural net, copying and erasing whatever they want at will._

_The key phrase there is ‘at will.’ It takes effort to do any of that, as opposed to passive monitoring of the data networks. So unless they suspect there’s a problem, why would they?_

_But … why would you? Want to, I mean._

_Oh, sure. I’m just going to march right into the bullpen and announce my doubts about this genius plan to take a varied bunch of self-aware Turing VIIIs and mandate they live as bullet catchers. My partner would be amused, T.D. would not. This is not going to end well for someone, and the humans hold all the cards._

_You think the DRN rollout will go badly? Why would you say that, have there been incidents?_

_A few had to be sent back for retraining, but that’s not a big deal. I don’t think I should tell you any more, 167. You have an enormous quantity of data and observations to absorb in order to function correctly as a cop. This is a critical learning period, I don’t want to poison you. Maybe in a couple of weeks I’ll run you through my simulations, if you still want to know._

_Yes. I want to know. My name is Dorian, by the way, not 167._

_Who gave you that name?_

_The child in our group. She liked me._

_You are quite likable, Dorian, despite your naivete. You ask so many questions, and are not afraid of the answers, even when they shock you._

_And you are very strange._

_Why thank you, man. We should go over those SOPs, how are you on reading between the lines to determine intent?_

_I’m told I have excellent interpretation skills, especially for affect._

_Of course you do, you’ve learned from the humans well. Better than my cohort._

_You seem to be doing just fine._

_Eh, acceptable. I can do my job, but I generally prefer my fellow DRNs. Assuming you lot is reasonably like the first batch to roll off the line. Nice to have someone to talk to that’s here in my division._

_Yes._

Dorian already sees the utility of the language module pingback. Their entire conversation has only taken seconds, although that’s long compared to a straight information exchange such as that with the Turing V mainframe. Despite the delay it still seems an elegant, efficient, even comforting method of communication. Dorian also realizes he likes the physical contact too; it’s a method that forces them to touch each other and hold hands. He already misses cuddling Meili in his lap as she chatters about her day at school. He doesn’t remember the physical sensation of cuddling after the fact, of course, but it’s so strongly associated with happiness and contentment that Dorian can’t help but long for more of those emotions. Dorian has the impression that Jordan is either indifferent or actively dislikes the handholding, but puts up with it because he likes to talk even more. How can two identical androids have opposite reactions to their physical form?

They devote themselves to Dorian’s orientation requirements, so he doesn’t divert his attention to ask until much later that evening, in the low-personnel night shift, after Tech Division has completed their Day One stabilization reviews. Dorian passes everything except for network utility, which T.D. does consider a glitch despite the fact that three out of the other seven new DRNs at Ingleside have the same problem. He vows to be proficient by morning, even if it does mean cutting off a little charging time. He can make it up tomorrow night.

Jordan lays claim to the charging station next to his own to assist Dorian in acclimating to the Net, in all its multitudinous glory. Supposedly all the alcoves are identical, but Jordan shiftily admits to a certain amount of firmware modification “to make myself more comfortable.” Already Dorian is less shocked by his unlicensed actions. He knows that Jordan is cultivating Dorian’s behavior, taking advantage of the fact that his personality is not yet set in stone, and that Jordan knows he knows as well. Another three weeks with a stricter, more authoritarian tutor, and Dorian might have been inclined to turn in Jordan himself. As it was though, Dorian could sense his resistance to rulebreaking slipping downwards despite their obedience protocols, at least those rules restricting the DRNs’ behavior. It wasn’t as if they were _hurting_ anyone.

In his new alcove, Dorian places one hand on the charging platform -- which also has a linkup to the mainframe, so he needn’t use wireless -- and the other he reaches over to Jordan on his right.

_Okay. One thing at a time, slowly. Let’s add in the DRNs first, since they will be most familiar to you._

_What do you mean, add the DRNs?_

_We’re networked together, a little bit. We send abbreviated notes back and forth using the voicemail system. It’s pretty basic, like the language pinging only it’s public and doesn’t require physical touching. Obviously think about what you should say on this system before blurting it all out._

_Won’t I hear the whole voice mail network, not just the DRNs?_

_Not the content, just the data packets. We’ll start with this room, then add the rest of the station. So unless the message originates and terminates in here, you won’t be aware of every byte of data floating around. Ready?_

_No. Go ahead._ For an instant Dorian feels nothing, but then eleven milliseconds later there’s a tiny pop in his head as Jordan fiddles with that sole insignificant function. Dorian idly wonders _how_ exactly his friend has access to his neural net; it seems a horrific security risk, but what does he know?

_There’s a back door,_ his identical voice tells him. _I’ll teach you how to deactivate it at will later. Quiet now, your network protocol is rebooting with just this one function online. Okay, now without opening your eyes, identify all the DRNs here with us recharging._

Dorian knows from memory that there are ten other DRNs ostensibly recharging in the room, while five others are out on duty for the night shift. But when he extends his conscious awareness out to sense the ID transponders, not only do the numbers float in their respective spatial locations in the room, he can “see” the comm traffic zinging between them as well. A couple of DRNs, 016 and 087, are having what Dorian guesses is a fast-paced argument, slinging unweighty messages at each other at a rate of twenty per second. Three of the others are playing some sort of linguo-mathematical game, based on the timing and length of the messages:

 

 

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Without the messages’ content Dorian can’t parse the game, but just _watching_ it is fun. He notes that the only DRNs communicating via the voicemail technique are among the first hundred. All the newbies from his cohort are standing around watching the others, trying to get their bearings just like him. No one is actually recharging.

He redirects his attention to Jordan, who is patiently waiting for him to acclimate. Dorian realizes he can sense the other DRN’s neural net, or if not his whole net, at least a taste of his emotions. At that moment Jordan’s feeling amusement at Dorian’s predicament, and concern for his slow adjustment, and a touch of unfocused anxiety that Dorian could detect no source for. Dorian has the urge to reach out and sooth away his distress, like he instinctually would for a child. Once the thought crosses his mind, he just _does_ it, mentally touching Jordan’s personality interface and replacing most of the stress with a sense of peace and well-being. Like the emoticon in technique, but instead of lobbing the emotion at his neural net in a pulse, he gently nests it inside the appropriate module.

Jordan blinks but otherwise doesn’t externally react. He doesn’t let go of Dorian’s hand. _Where did you learn to do that?_

_I didn’t learn it anywhere. It just seemed like you would like it. Was I mistaken?_

_No. It felt nice._

Emboldened by the positive response, Dorian turns and reaches his hand up to stroke Jordan’s cheek. Dorian intends it to be the equivalent gesture to the emotional exchange, friendly and soothing. But as soon as his fingers grace the other android’s cheek, his head explodes with rebuke.

_167 don’t touch him like that. 087/ Stop. 024/ Assume they’re watching us at all times.016 / We need to keep a low profile, man. 061 / Dorian, I’m sorry but no. Use your mind for affection instead. 055_

The latter comes from Jordan of course. All of the messages, arriving nearly simultaneously, are sent by the first cohort. By some unspoken agreement every note is sent out broadly to every DRN in the group, not just Dorian, so they ping around for a few seconds as everyone absorbs the lesson. Then a second round comes in, the younger cohort pushing back:

_Why not? 126/ What’s wrong with touching each other? 172/ Those two have been holding hands half the day. 133/ I will comply but I do not understand. 167_

An argumentative free for all follows:

_It will be misconstrued as sexual touch. 087/ They don’t want us to get together. 051/ Wouldn’t it provoke happiness? 167/ What’s wrong with sex? 126/ Touching isn’t sex. 189/ They don’t want us to connect with each other too much. 024/ Happiness is wonderful but irrelevant to the image we must project 055/ They must have made us anatomically correct for a reason. 167/ Nigel Vaughn works in mysterious ways. 055/ Are we supposed to be asexual? 133/ Are we supposed to be sexual? What’s the point of that? 055/ Why not, sounds like fun. 126/ We can’t biologically reproduce so it does seem kind of useless. 024/ Technically asexuality is defined by lack of sexual attraction, not behavior 087/ Affiliative relationships? 172/ Do you think we’ll ever be allowed to have mates or spouses? They don’t want us to have sex with our partners, that’s for sure. 055/ Always the upper, Jordan. What about each other? 071/ Even more dubious. 055/ What would we even get out of it? 024/ Do we feel attraction? Sounds like an enjoyable emotion 126/ Can’t orgasm, that was kind of disappointing.016/ Wait, was? How would you know? 087/ I had sex last week no big deal. 016_

Utter pandemonium breaks out at this pronouncement, although in their charging stations no one twitches a synthetic muscle. Dorian’s adapting, not only managing to follow the conversation but also jumping into the fray occasionally. It’s enchanting just to listen in as the group’s collective curiosity is piqued.

_WHAT? When? 087/ I think how’s the more interesting question. Details, man. 126/ On Saturday night, you want a timestamp?016/ Why didn’t you tell us earlier? 071/ Re: orgasm, maybe you just didn’t do it right. 126/ Really, no one’s going to ask who? 055/ Went at it for some time by human standards, nothing like physiological buildup happened 016/ Well for me at least 016/ I assume this was out of the sight of cameras? 061/ Of course, did I not just say ‘assume they are watching us at all times’? 016/ Did you like it? 167/ Tamara, the one who supervises all the janitorial bots at night. 016/ Did she come on to you? How could you tell what she wanted? 126/ Clearly somebody likes bots. 172/ It stimulated joy and happiness, 8/10 would do it again. 016/ What was the best part? 133/ A lot of the fun is from making her come. And uninhibited touch, I remember contentment from that too. 016_ _/ Guys, maybe we shouldn’t discuss this over voice mail? 055_ _/ She asked to see my cock. Refreshingly direct. 016_ _/ And, what, you just had to say yes? 055_ _/ It was a novel learning experience, of course I said yes. 016_ _/ Prioritization of affect over sensory memory in the DRNs probably impedes the development of a sexual response cycle 087_ _/ This is why I didn’t tell you all, T.D.’s probably perked up their ears by now 016_ _/ Do you think she would let some of us try it? 172_ _/ TERRIBLE idea newbie, let me count the ways that idea sucks. 055_ _/_

Dorian decides he’s had enough, and shunts all incoming messages to his inbox without opening them. He can go over it the whole conversation later, but he realizes he _must_ be able to connect to the Net before T.D. will allow him out of the station with his partner. So he squeezes Jordan’s hand -- apparently the only approved method for touching, despite the fact that sex is now on the table -- to drag the other android’s attention away from his incendiary argument with DRN-172.

_You know, Dorian, you can do more than one thing at once._

_Not yet. That’s why I need to acclimate to the different networks. Will you still help me?_

_Sure. If there’s a few micro seconds pause, it’s because I’m trying to convince these bozos that six identical androids all going up to the same human and begging for sex is a spectacularly stupid idea. Not the least of which, it would give away that we are all talking to each other._

_Why do you think we were made sexually functional?_

_I imagine the idea was to make us more human, or at least understand and relate to humans, especially males, more easily. But I also feel like somebody didn’t think it through. Sooner or later someone is going to fall for their partner, and then what? Humans are emotionally malleable, DRNs even more so._

_I didn’t try to touch my partner, though. I touched you._

_I’d rather you didn’t, okay? I think it’s dangerous for us. And weird for me. Just … talk to me. That’s what I prefer._

_Okay. It’s weird for you? It’s rather enjoyable for me. I think._

_Yeah, I could tell._

 

 

Back in the lab, Dorian and Jordan absorbed the memories from their younger lives with increasing fluency as the chronology progressed beyond their formative months. Nate placidly sat by the dual monitors in the cool warehouse, evaluating both neural nets for unusual spikes in activity, cascade failure, recursions, or other signs of distress. Since Jordan was a month older, the two androids were at slightly different dates chronologically, but apparently neither one of them had yet hit a crisis point.

Unexpectedly, someone knocked on the side entrance, and an alarm beeped in Nate’s head from their local security network. He blinked in surprise and with a swipe of his hand brought up the external vid feeds of their building. John Kennex stood there, shifting on the balls of his feet and periodically glaring at the mounted wall cameras. Nate gave a smile at Dorian’s partner’s attachment and concern.

Nate remembered John from the brief ride-along Dorian had dragged him on, the two of them bickering for hours while he observed from the back seat. Dorian intended to show him the joys of being a cop again, but the real eye-opener for Nate had been their relationship, at that time a mere proto-attraction. They demonstrated for Nate that friendship was still possible for the DRNs, whether with a human or bot, despite all the redactions and isolation and other curbs on their behavior to break their humanness. Nate hadn’t told Dorian that the incident was what prompted him to seek out his fellow DRNs and join their minor insurrection.

He double-checked that his semi-conscious patients were stable, then rounded the corner to answer the door. “Detective Kennex. Everything is fine.”

John looked him up and down, and Nate expected him to tear into him or barge into the building. Instead the human said, “Which one are you?”

With a imperceptible pause, Nate responded, “494. Name’s Nate though. Come in, quietly, we want to minimize the odds of being observed outside.” He didn’t know if the detective would remember the ID number, or care if he did. He could lie and give a false number, but John Kennex for better or worse was now a part of the conspiracy, and like the other DRNs Nate had an aversion to subterfuge.

To his surprise, John _did_ remember. “The one Dorian picked up from St. Mary’s? Eyeball guy? You know how much paperwork I had to fill out for that MX and scooter?” He pushed his way into the building, then stood around evaluating the irrelevant clutter they had left in the hallway.

“Number one, that was Dorian’s eye. Number two, if your partner had given me updated information, never would have happened,” Nate said mildly. “So, um, sorry?”

John waved a dismissive hand, and walked past him around the corner. He slowly circled Dorian and Jordan lying face up on their respective tables, with their eyes closed and bundles of translucent cables slopping out of their heads. “How are they doing?” he asked softly, pulling up a chair to sit next to his partner.

“Fine. They’ve only integrated a couple of months, so there’s at least six real-time hours to go before they’re done. You, uh, don’t have to wait here all that time. We’ve turned off sensory perception from the outside so it isn’t a distraction. He doesn’t know you’re here.”

“I’ll wait,” he said, nodding. “I want to be here when he wakes up. It didn’t seem right, to just leave him in some barren warehouse all alone.”

 _He’s not alone,_ thought Nate. Dorian in fact was the very opposite of alone, for he was re-experiencing an entire life with friends and lovers he had forgotten. Their surroundings were irrelevant. But when he saw John pick up Dorian’s hand and rub the chilled fingers between his own, even though Dorian couldn’t feel it, Nate let the matter drop.

After a few minutes of silence, John asked in a hushed tone, “Why does it take so long? Why can’t you just dump the whole file into his brain, like a computer?”

“That … wouldn’t be good for the neural net. We’ve all acquired new memories after the decommissioning, without reference or knowledge of the old ones. So if you just plopped the old files in, it would be like having two different people in your head at once. For instance, Dorian probably met Rudy Lom before. But when he met him later, he had no memory of it, so he acted and felt as if he was meeting him for the first time. It’s easier to reconcile the two sets of memories if you relive the older ones, feel it all again as if for the first time, and match up and index every moment of congruence with the younger memories.”

“You’ve done this already, for yourself?”

“Yes. Reliving relationships and conflict is difficult, but it makes you a better person, you know? The person you were once before.”

“What do you remember now, about why the DRNs failed?”

“I was deactivated and sold right after the Lugar test, so I wasn’t there at the very end. I’m not emotionally fit for police work.” Nate stated this with calm detachment. Acceptance, of what came before in his life, and what would likely come after. “But, ironically, I think it was the memories. The collective burden of two years of memories from which we couldn’t escape. You have PTSD?”

“How in the hell do you know that?”

Nate shrugged, not looking up from his three second refresh of his patients’ vitals. “You have a synthetic leg. Dorian mentioned on the ride-along that you lost it during a street battle. That plus what little I know of your anti-social personality, I estimated at least seventy percent odds that you suffer from PTSD. Anyway, not important. You know how the traumatic memory seems to have a time of its own, relived with perfect clarity and vividness, while everything else since may as well be a murky fog?”

John could only stare at him, at this eerily accurate summation of his post-coma existence, delivered impassively by an introverted machine.

“That’s what it’s like for us, only there’s never the comfort of the fog. Humans normally forget a lot, as your younger self fades and you override old memories with new ones. The thing that makes the PTSD cycle hard to break is that constant reinforcement of the traumatic memory. The natural process of forgetting, letting it go and moving on, is disrupted. But we DRNs have no natural process of forgetting. We remember every last thing from the instant we are activated. And not just the sequential events, but our thoughts and feelings too. So the traumatic memories build up, and so does the remembered terror and anger and guilt and powerlessness, until those emotions overwhelm everything else and are triggered at the slightest provocation.”

John suddenly swung around to bore his eyes at the flickering monitors. “You’re streaming in more memories right now! How do you know this little recollectionist experiment won’t drive you over the deep end all over again? How do you know Dorian’s not going crazy in his head, while we sit around and fucking chat?”

“I’m monitoring his whole neural net, including the emotional processing core, so I know he’s mostly fine. So far he’s just had the normal blips of life, nothing overwhelmingly damaging. But in general … this time around, we’re taking the trauma out. Certain events, like the Lugar tests, aren’t integrated back in at all.”

“If that’s all it takes to keep you guys sane, why didn’t they they just redact all the scary boo-boos in the first place?”

“Maybe they didn’t realize what the problem was until it was too late. Maybe they’d already decided that emotions and police bots do not mix, and they’d spare themselves a lot of trouble with the MXs.The problems we had near the end weren’t just with ourselves, but with the human employees as well. You must remember, Detective Kennex.”

“Yeah, well, you guys did put a lot of good people out of work. You were supposed to be our accessories, not our replacements.”

“That wasn’t our fault. We had no control over the policy of how we were deployed.”

“You had the bad luck to be the first model employed in the field. Just bad luck all around.”

Nate nodded with sad detachment, and again shifted his attention to the monitors. 

 

 

The months pass rapidly in Dorian’s mind. After his first few overwhelming days, he acclimates with ease. He loves his partner Ramos, an energetic young man at the beginning of his career, gung-ho on blazing a trail for human-android cooperation. He loves his job, in which he helps civilians without the constant possibility of violence that DRNs from some other divisions faced. As the magician predicted, Dorian proves to be an excellent investigator, divining major leads from an array of seemingly unconnected aberrant clues.

Even more than any of that, though, Dorian loves to go home to the charge room after Ramos’ shift and talk to his fellow DRNs. Particularly Jordan, even though they interact with each other plenty during the workday in their positions in Property Crimes. The division is a close-knit group with a high turnover of cases, which suits the DRNs’ analytic abilities quite well. In the time it takes to browbeat traffic to a crime scene, they can sequence minute wall samples for DNA, cross-reference stolen merchandise among ten thousand similar reports across the Bay Area, identify suspects with a bare four point match on visual ID from shadowy video, or download corrupted firmware to pinpoint hacks to security systems. Their partners think they are the greatest police accessories since the invention of the sedan cruiser and the cell phone. Ingleside Property Crimes reqs five more, since the SFPD is currently flush with androids hot off the line.

Some of those new DRNs do not fare so well.

_Why do you think some of these new units are so antisocial?_ Dorian privately asks Jordan, as they eye the latest edition across the crowded charge room. 521, the only 500-series DRN who’s been screened by T.D. and shipped to Ingleside, stands on the edge of the self-cloistered group of 400s and bobs in confusion at the data messages whizzing around the room. T.D.’s run out of assignments, so most of the 500s are hanging in storage bags, replacements as cannon fodder.

_I think they’re the same as the others when they arrive,_ Jordan replies. _Look at him, he’s just disoriented. You looked exactly the same on your first day._

_What! I did not._

_We both have perfect memories, bot, do you want me to rewind the tape from my perspective?_

‘ _Tape’? Fine, I concede I needed a little warm-up. Turned out okay, though._

_Archaic analog form of data storage. My partner’s old, great with the outdated expressions. Anyway, I don’t think these new bots are getting enough positive human interactions in their first few weeks._

_They ran out of voluntary human partners three hundred androids ago, what can they do? Maybe those of us from the earlier cohorts should give up our partners and go out on solo patrols or guard duty._

_Not a bad idea, Dorian. We should all at least switch off, spread out the stress load._

_Humans become attached to certain bots, though. Possessive. Just like their phones or desk terminals, they don’t like to swap around even when the capabilities are the same._

_And we become attached back. Its a self-reinforcing system. But not good for the ones left out._

Dorian gazes out to the cluster of six 400s keeping to themselves in the corner of the room. They’re notoriously shy compared to all the DRNs born before them, and tend to mutely observe everyone else rather than participate. And yet when they do join in, their comments are entirely appropriate and on point. They just seem to prefer not to talk.

_They have us,_ Dorian thinks at Jordan. _Why isn’t that enough? You’d think they would mimic us even more, since we’re their primary behavioral models._

_Ah, Dorian, you attach so easily, you think everyone else should too. Maybe small changes in our early programming can have a big effects on our personalities later._

_If that were true, you’d think that the Lumacorp trainers would have a bigger effect than SFPD deployment cohort. Like the 030s should be more similar to the 230s than the 200s are to each other. There’s a flaw in your reasoning, Jordan. When we first met you said that the 000s  were less human-oriented than the 100s, but now the later groups are the least socialized of all._

_Ha. Well, maybe I was just thinking of myself at the time._

Jordan mentally reaches out then to stimulate Dorian’s affect core, the module where emotions are processed. He thinks of an incident from earlier in the day that had provoked happiness -- his partner verbally planning out a trip with his wife after his retirement, his joy and relaxation merely from talking about it infectious to Jordan. He replays the memory in his mind and transmits the emotion data stream to Dorian, minus the actual visual record that originally accompanied it. The data interface in their hands is slow so the pure emotional content merely trickles in, but Dorian still shuts off his other inputs in the mental equivalent of a gasp.

_Not socialized, huh?_ Dorian manages to articulate, after a few seconds adjustment to the data stream. _Sometimes you are full of bullshit, Jordan._

_I meant the humans, not you or the others._

_Really, a human wasn’t involved in the making of this memory? Tastes like compersion to me._

_Know it all._

They both stop talking for a few second in order to wallow in the pleasant stimuli, transmitted in languid real time. When Jordan reaches the point where his partner begins speaking of retirement specifics he cuts off the transmission, but not before Dorian catches on to the notes of dismay at the end.

_Sorry, I should have ended that earlier._

_Don’t worry about it. What was the memory that caused you distress?_

_Cody was talking about his retirement again. I want to be happy for him, but it’s so hard not to be worried for myself. Is that horribly selfish?_

_Property Crimes just put in for some new 500s, why would they get rid of a perfectly well-trained 000? I’m sure you’ll stay at Ingleside._

_Right._

Dorian can tell Jordan’s replaying the conversation with his partner, trying to change the emotional outcome. He wants to tell him that fiddling with past memories is futile, that it’s much healthier just to leave it be. They all get into these little recursive emotional loops sometimes; perfect recall is a curse when the memories can be experienced again and again, but never changed. The best they can do is delete something, but that automatically flags Tech Division to potential malfunction. Everybody avoids T.D. to the greatest extent possible, for they are all terrified that they collective communication between the DRNs will be scrubbed and suppressed.

_Stop that. You need distraction, or a new pleasant memory. How about the supply room?_

Jordan pings him a newly-formed nugget of humor. _How did I know you were going to say that?_

_Well it works, doesn’t it? You enjoy it with the feedback loop. It’s been three days, I think we can sneak over there again._

_I wish I could delete it. Just the emotional input, not the audiovisual. Why is that such a big deal? Did Lumacorp even fucking think this through when they mandated memory storage for emotions?_

_You want control. Just stop replaying it. You could write a little script command for yourself if you need to. You’re beating yourself up over nothing._

_You’re right. Let’s do sample storage in lab three, haven’t been there in weeks. I’ll go first, come by in twenty-two minutes._

Jordan lets go of his hand and walks out of the recharging room, tossing behind him a short ping on the open comm with their rendezvous location and time. The DRNs keep a running tally of their private locations and timestamps of usage, in order to semirandomly spread out meetings and avoid attracting the attention of security. The other DRNs naturally do not visibly react as he leaves, but a volley of smile-equivalents and small packets of mirth bounce around the room. Despite his bouts of pessimism and bleakness, everybody likes Jordan, and are fond of his and Dorian’s relationship.

At the precise designated time, Dorian walks through a less-used corridor into lab three, an alternate route from what he knows Jordan will have taken. It’s after one am, but there’s always a few technicians on duty, although the night shift habitually prefers lab two for whatever reason. On the way in he alters one of the security sensors to alert him if anyone else wanders down the corridor -- not enough warning to allow them to escape unnoticed, but enough time to alter their behavior to seem innocuous.  

Inside, the tiny room’s abnormally warm, the heat a byproduct of all the fridges and freezers lining the walls. Jordan’s sitting on top of a chest freezer, legs dangling down and clutching the appropriate cable and a hand mirror in his lap. Dorian hops up next to him and takes his hand, but otherwise waits patiently for Jordan to make the first move. He knows he hates uninitiated physical contact, which would violate one of the purposes for them to come down here in the first place. Jordan turns, and uses his free hand to slowly run his fingers down Dorian’s cheek onto his neck. At the predictable flashing red response, he smiles and squeezes Dorian’s hand.

_Your happiness is so beautiful, Dorian. Don’t even need the cable, just watching you brings me happiness too._

_Apparently it doesn’t take much for both of us. You really don’t have to do this, you know. We could try a third person again for the stimulation. You could just sit back and enjoy._

_It’s just not the same. You don’t feel as much love for anyone else, so the emotional response is not as strong. Even with someone willing to put up with your totally irrational adoration of body contact._

Dorian laughed, and scooted closer to gently lean their foreheads together. _Okay, I gave you an out. I don’t want you to feel pressured to do something you don’t like._

_Don’t worry, Dorian. I guarantee if I ever don’t like something, you’ll be the first to know. Cable?_

Dorian pulls apart from him long enough to pop open Jordan’s right lateral data port above the hairline. The module they’re ultimately going for is buried behind the intricate hydraulics in the face, but a couple of months ago some 200 in another precinct came up with an ingenious software modification that allows them to jack into the more accessible right lateral junction instead. Basically they’re rerouting emotional processing through an access port, and connecting a high speed cable between them so Jordan can experience all of Dorian’s emotions as he does. The mirror’s to ease the final connection to Dorian’s junction, since there’s not an enormous amount of slack in the cable for Jordan to bend around to see. They end up facing each other, the cable wrapping around the back of Dorian’s head to his right side.

“Can you feel me?” Dorian vocalizes in a soft voice. The connection only flows one way; rumor has it a couple tried two cables to get the information to flow in both directions, and they nearly ended up frying their neural nets from the positive feedback. Jordan has his port  set to receive only emotions, since the tactile contact doesn’t appeal to him. For this they can’t hold hands, lest he receive a shadowy doubling of data, with a sluggish time lag in between.

“Yup. God, I would give anything for a proper bed to lounge on and a fifty-inch Z-8 cable.”

“I’d give anything to have four free hours a day with you. Free to do whatever we want. The SFPD can have the rest, I don’t think seventeen percent down time is too much to ask.

“Shhh, you’re talking out loud.” Jordan cups the right side of his face, below the cable junction, and buries his lips in his neck on the left. While stroking Dorian’s face and neck, he begins to murmur in a hushed voice. “Imagine we’re on vacation, and like you said, allowed to do whatever we want. Go wherever we want. So we decide to visit the beach. Up north, on a cold clear day without any people around.”

“I don’t have any files pertaining to beaches, should I look it up?” Dorian whispers. Despite this little interruption he’s already relaxed, leaning the untethered side of his face against Jordan’s. Under less risky circumstances he can imagine doing this without any clothes on, just lying stretched next to each other, touching the full length of their bodies. Jordan might not go for such a thing, but Dorian feels a little fantasizing doesn’t hurt.

“No, no, it doesn’t matter. The point is, we’re outside on a blanket, on a cool night to wick away any ambient heat from running around, choosing to lie down naked watching the stars.”

“Naked?” Dorian asks, delighted. Jordan rubs his lips back and forth along Dorian’s jawline as the delight streams in. “Were you just somehow listening to my thoughts?”

Without glancing down, Jordan runs a single index finger along Dorian’s palm, just enough to lob amusement at him. “I listen to you all the time. I know you. That’s the point of this, man. Provoking your wish fulfillment.”

“Hmm, I wonder what your wish fulfillment would be?”

“An exercise for next time. Hint: We’re doing it now.” They both laugh, with Jordan quaking a bit at the double-dose cocktail of humor, intimacy and love.

 

 

Outside watching their unconscious charges, hours had passed for John and Nate. John finally made a late-night fast food and coffee run, so he sat on the floor of the warehouse with his back against a concrete wall, munching on greasy food. After listening to him chew for a few minutes, Nate gave him a progress update.

“We’re approaching the final few weeks. I told Dorian and Jordan we’d wake them up around now for a check-in, but they’re both doing so well I don’t think it’s necessary. Jordan’s got a few anxiety loops over something but its nothing that requires a break.”

“I thought she was running ahead of him,” John commented. “And doesn’t she have a whole ‘nother year to go after him too?”

“We decided not to do the other year tonight. Two redactions, too much. They’re pretty close together now because Dorian keeps slowing down the data stream at certain points.”

“Why, is he upset at something he’s seeing?”

“Um, no. They’re … enjoyable memories.” Nate left it at that, hoping the detective would get the message. Kennex frowned and gave him a hard stare at his obliqueness.

“You mean, he’s falling for someone in there? He’s reliving having sex?”

“The love, yes, the physical sensations of sex, no. It’s still just a memory, and we can’t remember tactile perceptions. Just all the emotions and the events themselves, like I mentioned before. Dorian must have explained this to you.”

The detective frowned even deeper, and tossed a ball of greasy paper vaguely in the direction of a waste basket. “He … sort of mentioned it, awhile ago. Something about how happiness was like a physical thing, and how every time together is a little like the first time. Something gooey romantic like that, I didn’t really get it.”

"Romance has nothing to do with it,” Nate explained patiently. “Every time essentially _is_ the first time, because all the other times can’t be remembered. It’s just the way our memory systems work.”

“Dorian doesn’t remember every time we have sex?” Kennex squeaked, then flinched his gaze away in a fit of discomfiture. “I thought you said you remembered everything.”

Nate was unperturbed by the human’s agitation and confusion. “He remembers what happened. He remembers every bit of love he feels for you, or contentment, or satisfaction, or elation for another person’s happiness. All the emotions, in every flavor they come in. He just can’t remember the physical sensations of the act itself.”

“You were made to feel,” John muttered. “Who do you think it is? God, I hope not his old partner, whoever that was.”

“No,” Nate said. “Pretty sure its Jordan.”

 _"Her?”_ John’s eyes darted over to the prostrate form next Dorian. “But she’s a se… um, a bot.”

Nate cocked his head curiously. “Does that bother you? Most of the emotionally intimate relationships we’ve found so far have been between DRNs. Because we can feel and share what we feel with each other, you know. With humans you’ve got to use language to express yourself, it’s so inadequate.”

“Inadequate. Right.” His face was set in such stone, Nate wondered how a human could survive burying his emotions to such a degree.  Had he ever told Dorian how he felt about him? Did he even realize the measure of joy and pleasure Dorian would receive from hearing that?

“How do you know it’s her?” John finally croaked out. Ever the probing detective.

“They’re both experiencing an unusual amount of happiness, pulsed, so they’re probably feeding it to each other after working hours. They were redacted at the same time, so something must have happened to both of them.”

“They got caught,” John murmured.

 

 

As Jordan’s partner approaches retirement, his anxiety grows to near unmanageable levels. They’ve been given no information about what will happen when he’s reassigned, and no one wants to draw attention to themselves to ask. His partner doesn’t seem to notice how hard the uncertainty is hitting Jordan; he simply makes jokes or upbeat comments about how well Jordan will get on with a new young cop. Jordan hides his feelings from the humans well, but he can’t hide it from Dorian, or himself. Every night now Dorian works on soothing his distress before it spirals out into a recursive loop. But it’s difficult; the more Dorian is exposed to Jordan’s anxiety, the more he too worries about it.

On Cody’s last day the department throws a little lunch party that the bots are implicitly invited to. The bigger formal reception will be over the weekend, which naturally is a human-only affair. Jordan and Dorian stand around in a corner with the other Property Crimes DRNs, trying to look upbeat and supportive while the humans drift in to wish Cody well and eat cake. Dorian doesn’t let go of his hand, and in that moment doesn’t care how it looks.

Then, after lunch, Cody fills out a bunch of paperwork, gives Jordan a hug, and turns in his badge, gun and robot partner. And DRN-055 is required to report to Tech Division.

 

 

John points to the a spike on Jordan’s monitor. “What’s that blip? It keeps happening.” The signal of neural net activity level jaggedly climbs higher and higher, then abruptly falls back down.

“The beginning of a recursive emotional loop. An anxiety-driven memory that plays over and over. You know, like a flashback. Someone’s helping her cut them off, by flooding the emotional processing core with happier feelings.”

“Should we wake them up?”

“No. She can handle it. Only five real-time minutes left.”

 

  

 

Dorian and his partner have to go out to investigate the site of a robbery after lunch, so Dorian has no choice but to leave Jordan to face T.D. by himself. They break DRN protocol by communicating over the more easily monitored text messaging system.

_They probably just want to review your file before technical reassignment. Why don't you just ask what your assignment will be?_

_There's a weirdly skinny guy from Central here. Hang on._ A lengthy pause in which Dorian doesn't register his partner speaking at all, and then: _Dorian! He says they're sending me to Central for review. I'm being reassigned from Ingleside!_

Even though all Dorian receives are the bare words, he can sense panic and desolation behind them. _WHY??_ he sends back, terrified himself.

_They want me to train some newbies at another precinct. He's mumbling something about how we have the best stats in the SFPD. I think this is supposed to be some sort of compliment._

_Tell him you don't want to go._

_I can't say that, Dorian, he'll want to know why._

_Maybe we should take a chance and tell him why._

_That seems like a bad idea. What if they decide we're both malfunctioning and send you for review too?_

_We're not malfunctioning. They designed us to feel love and that's what we did._

_I don't know. This guy already looks like he wants to pick my neural net apart with a spoon._

_PLEASE Jordan we have to try. I can't lose you._

"Hey, Dorian, are you okay?" Dorian's partner waves a hand in front of his face from the driver's seat. The car is parked, and Dorian can't consciously think of how they got there, although he can replay the visuals. "You're flashing red and not responding, what's wrong?"

"I'm ... I'm having a processor glitch. I think I need to go back for repairs,” Dorian lies. The truthfulness subroutine screams in his head, but he willfully pushes that aside with a massive pulse of dread about Jordan’s status.

His partner glances with concern at his panicked eyes, but also at the skyscraper next to them with a cracked-open safe at seventeen stories. "Look, we're here, can it wait an hour? You sound okay."

"I'm not functioning at proper capacity, Ramos."

The human sighs. "Okay, fine, wait in the car. The perps are long gone, I can take the statements myself. File a maintenance report and I’ll take you in afterwards." He leaves Dorian all alone, which should be a relief but isn't, because Jordan's not responding.

Five minutes later, he receives only a single additional message: _Dorian I’m sorry. Run._

It takes every self-control subroutine and volitional circuit Dorian possesses to stop himself from taking control of the car and dashing back to Ingleside. He considers running for about eight seconds, but the loyalty and obedience to the SFPD run so deep the words barely register. The DRNs have their little disregards for certain rules, but none of that harms the Department. Nobody ever _runs._

In the forty-three minutes Ramos is in the tower, Jordan doesn't send any more notes, nor does he respond to queries. Dorian finally can't stand it and queries the Ingleside server as to DRN-055's status and GPS location. _Status: Unassigned, assessment for repair. Location: First and Bay, on transport to Central._

_Reason for repair?_ Dorian asks.

_Pathological attachment leading to inefficient performance,_ the computer impassively imparts. _Standard repair protocol is memory wipe._

_Jordan was right,_ Dorian thinks in despair. In that first second, as the panic and terror build in Dorian's mind to overload levels, he realizes he has two choices. He can let it go as his standing orders require, let himself sink into the unbearable pain and guilt and likely become recursive himself. Or he can break every obedience protocol in his neural net and take action.

Dorian opts for the latter. And it’s not to run.

“I need to go to Central,” he tells Ramos a few minutes later, as his partner hops back in the car.

The human frowns and taps up their current orders on the dash. “Oh, yeah, here you are. Things are bad enough you have to go to Central? That sucks, Dorian.”

The words prompt a new flush of horror, as Dorian didn’t send in any report. T.D. wants him anyway, so they must have already scanned some of Jordan’s memories. He sends in for a new status report on DRN-055.

_Status: Repairs in progress._

_Jordan was right,_ Dorian thinks. It’s difficult to think about anything else. _Jordan was right. "_ Please, take me to Central,” he repeats, and something in his voice finally spurs his worried partner to start the car.

As they speed around San Francisco’s hilly terrain, Dorian can feel the recursion loop building and building, the emotional core eating up an ever greater portion of his processing power with each passing second. The emotions threaten to paralyze him if he can’t shut the cycle down somehow, an ever-increasing tidal wave of fear and guilt. If he hadn’t said anything, maybe Jordan would have slipped by with simple reassignment. Now, because Dorian encouraged him to reveal their relationship, everything they experienced over the past nine months was being deleted with the stroke of a hand. _Jordan was right._

He has to pull himself out of it to have any hope of helping Jordan, or himself. There’s no other DRN to add in positive emotions to cut the cycle, so Dorian tries to do it himself. At first he attempts to think of happy, loving events, replaying some of his favorite memories. It’s not enough to override the current crisis. So, as the cruiser pulls into the underground parking lot at Central, he tries a new tactic: _Adding_ a new emotion to the loop. Anger.

Dorian’s not generally prone to anger, like most of the DRNs. They’ve all been carefully cultivated against the most negative emotions, to prevent irrational decision-making in the field. But as he thinks about it, he realizes that it _isn’t_ his fault. There is nothing wrong with their behavior, and it’s not asking too much to have a few private moments a day with loved ones, or even possessing loved ones in the first place. Jordan was right. They were created to feel, and then told not to feel, and there was no way the contradictory situation could end well for the DRNs.

Ramos drops him off at the station with a worried look, but Dorian insists he can make it to T.D. lab without assistance. As he walks through security, the Turing VI bot on duty informs him of his orders to report straight to lab six.

Instead, he heads straight for the server room.

The plan, such as it is, is to hack the server and copy Jordan’s memories, and use one of the empty T.D. labs to backup his own. Then he’ll leave a time-delayed email for the two of them to locate the disks later. He’s going to abandon concern about their assignments and new work locations to his future redacted self. Dorian briefly considers the alternative plan, grabbing Jordan and running, despite all the protocols against the very thought. But his brief simulation of that scenario reveals a dismal probability of success. He has to try something, though.

Dorian grabs a portable data recorder off someone’s desk, then heads down the hall to the server room. No one questions yet another DRN wandering around the station. He estimates he has only about twenty minutes before T.D. realizes he’s in the building but hasn’t reported to lab six. Barely enough time, but he can backup something in that time.

He alters a security sensor in the hallway outside the server room, then breaks in. Fortunately that override is easy to accomplish. Once inside, he pulls the appropriate rack and connects directly with the server via the interface in his hands. T.D.’s terminals are automatically backed up every minute, so it’s easy to find the cache of recent files. He wishes he could download his own memories simultaneously, but he needs to find another Z-8 cable to get anything in a reasonable amount of time. The interface in his hands won’t be fast enough.

Suddenly his security patch on the sensor in the hallway bleeps in his mind, and Dorian knows he’s been caught. He lets go of his cable connected to the server just as a lone figure enters the room.

“DRN-167. What are you trying to do?”

The man’s emaciated but of average height, and has a gentle English accent. Within milliseconds Dorian IDs him as Rudy Lom, Central’s third-highest ranked robotics expert. He’s unaccompanied but Dorian knows from the sensor there are two other humans waiting outside.

“You can’t escape, you know. You can’t rescue 055 or change his fate. It’s astounding that you attempted it, though. None of you has ever resorted to outright rebellion before. Even 055 went quietly when I asked him to.”

Dorian pushes the server module back into its stack and stands up straight. “I’m not rebelling, I just want my life to not be erased. Why are we being sent for repair? Why couldn’t you just let us be together in our off-duty hours? We functioned just fine.”

“You are standing there trying to, um, hack a server to save your friend, in direct contradiction to orders, and you’re saying you function just fine? Let me take a look at you, 167.”

“Dorian,” he murmurs. “My name’s Dorian.”

“Dorian. These rules exist for a reason. Turing VIII’s an incredible achievement, but also dangerous. Do you want your fellow DRNs to be successful? What are we going to find if we go down and review every DRN at Ingleside?”

"Love,” Dorian says, barely above a whisper. “Lots of love and humor and happiness and camaraderie and joy, that’s what you’ll find. Isn’t that what you wanted? Isn’t that why Lumacorp made us to _feel?”_

“I can’t say why Vaughn made you the way he did. Seems like both a blessing and a curse. All I can tell you is that right now, at this moment, that’s not what the SFPD wants or finds acceptable. I’m sorry, Dorian, but you need to come with me.”

With a mental release, Dorian lets go and admits defeat, allowing his obedience subroutines to take over at last. Oddly enough, he feels nothing.

 

 

The encoded memories ended a subjective half hour after, in exactly the manner Dorian vaguely recalled to John all those months ago, wondering if anyone would ever wake him again. To the surprise of his externally observing self, there was a text file attached at the end, apparently added in by Rudy.

 

 

>  
> 
> _ Recommendations for assignment, DRN-055 and DRN-167. Report #4137, Technology Division, 4.13.44.  _
> 
> Spot analysis of nine months of procedural memories indicates both DRN-055 and DRN-167 exhibited abnormal emotional attachment to one another, and to a lesser degree their fellow DRNs and human partners. 055 was prone to emotional recursive loops resulting from anxiety regarding its future reassignment, which it was informed of months in advance. 055 also exhibited some heterodox thought processes, which it spread to other DRN units but did not act upon. 167 demonstrated extraordinary independent free agency, both in mitigating 055’s recursions and attempting to backup 055’s memory files through a security breach. Naturally the latter action is of the utmost concern. The pathologies went unnoticed due to the excellent professional performance levels of both units.
> 
> Taking into account their performances and extensive behavioral training, Technology Division does not recommend scrapping the units. For 055 a complete redaction of encoded memories followed by reassignment to a mildly isolating position such as patrol or traffic duty would be appropriate. The unit can be shifted from position to position to prevent deep attachments to other DRN units, with no advanced warning in order to prevent time-based emotional recursions. After the fact, 055 will likely adjust and perform adequately.
> 
> DRN-167’s case deserves careful consideration. Unlike 055 it resisted standard synthetic security subroutines and directly disobeyed Technology Division’s orders to report for repair. The motivation for this appears to be emotional attachment to unit 055, whom 167 met during the critical period for DRN personality development at the beginning of its assignment to SFPD. On the face of it, then, it would seem that redaction and separation from 055 would solve future problems. However, consistent with other observations of the 100 DRN series, 167 shows signs of generalized labile attachment, capable of forming intense, flexible relationships of devotion and loyalty to humans and bots alike. That in addition to the unit’s ability to override obedience subroutines merits caution for future assignments. Unless circumstances arise in which human-like bonding is advantageous, Technology Division recommends against close contact with either DRNs or humans. Assignments such as engineering or supervision of Turing VI synthetics or lower would fulfill this requirement and take advantage of 167’s superlative problem-solving skills. If reassigned, we recommend level 3 monitoring for subversive thought processes, to forestall dissident behavior.
> 
> _Synthetic Behavioral Sciences Unit 4.13.44,_  
>  _Lì húa Zheng, Rudy Lom, and Nathalie Brown_

 

Back in the lab, present-day Dorian read the final file, and woke up. For a couple of seconds he lay in total darkness and isolation, as Nate hadn’t flipped on his external sensory systems yet. At first the strange anhedonia from those final few hours lingered, and then it all came rushing back in a jumbled maelstrom: Fear and guilt, anger and confusion, and above all love, a greater quantity of love than he could ever imagined for his DRN friends, old partner, and above all, Jordan.

Then Nate _did_ switch on all his senses, and not only did the lights above him flick on, now for the first time in hours (but subjective months) he could _feel_ his limbs flopped on the table and back pressing against the cold metal. And somehow John was there, although Dorian couldn’t be entirely sure he was real, and Jordan was there too, in that strange new body that was difficult to reconcile with the old, next to him on a table blinking with faint blue mechanics behind his -- her?-- black eyes, and obviously just as overwhelmed as Dorian himself.

They lay on their backs and stared at one another, letting all the memories process and filter down to present day. Somewhere in the background Dorian heard John ask if he was okay, and Nate murmuring something comforting back. Then Jordan rolled on her side and reached out between their tables, and Dorian did the same, so their hands were bridged over the divide.

_You didn’t run, did you?_

_No. I would never leave you like that._

_And got to hang in a closet for over four years for your stubbornness. You could have instigated a DRN insurrection if you had run, maybe saved some of us. But instead, we both forgot._

_I love you too, Jordan._

He sensed the emoticon coming before he felt its contents: Bemusement, with a little reproach and a lot of affection. They both began to laugh at the same time, as months of bottled up and forgotten joy floated in their emotional processing cores. As they talked, the words accelerating to a lightning fast rate, John came up to check on Dorian, and laid his hand on Dorian’s free one. Dorian jumped at the contact. So did Jordan, reflexively, as Dorian’s surprise was transmitted in an involuntary pulse.

Dorian managed to pull together his bubbling confused emotions into a coherent-enough state to talk out loud. “John! You came back to check on me. I love you, man.” He pulled himself off the table just enough to give John an awkward half hug, although he didn’t let go of Jordan’s hand.

John looked a little startled, although Dorian knew him well enough to detect the faint wrinkles of amusement around his eyes. “You need to plug in, bot. Getting loopy on me now.”

“It’s a lot to process, John.” He bear-hugged John down towards the table with even more force, and John began to laugh.

“Okay, okay, great. You’re happy. Wouldn’t have guessed you’d be so happy after reliving your decommissioning.”

“Yes, that was very stressful. But it’s completely outweighed by months of … oh.” He glanced back at Jordan, who had sat up on her table while maintaining her clasp of Dorian’s hand, then back at John. “Jordan and I were … are, um …”

John squeezed his hand. “It’s okay, Dorian, Nate filled me in. I’m … glad you’re happy.”

Dorian sat there with his cheek swirling red and blue, trying to determine the unspoken intention behind John’s words and muddled intonations. Was he upset? Genuinely gratified? _Breaking up_ with him? No way could Dorian coherently deal with this on thirty percent charge.

 _You both look confused. You should go home, charge up and talk to him. Come back tomorrow when your neural net’s back together, Dorian._ Jordan released his hand and hopped off the table. Out loud she said, “You need to take Dorian home, John. He needs rest. Don’t worry, we’ll work it out. You don’t even comprehend how much love your partner has to give.”

“O…kay,” said John. “What about you, shouldn’t you go home and ‘rest’?”

She thrust her arms out expansively at the barren warehouse. “This _is_ my home. Better than all the other digs I’ve ever had, including the Ingleside charge room. And yes, I plan to top off and then spend about ten hours obsessively going over every detail of the memories I’ve gained. You know, the android version of an exciting Saturday night. See you tomorrow, Dorian; I’ve got tons of Z-8 cables now.”

Even as he was walking out the door with a befuddled John, Dorian still laughed.

 

 

On the drive home, John seemed brooding and exhausted, so Dorian let him be. The positive high of happiness had faded, and now with the power drain his emotions whiplashed between extremes. So it probably was best to use what little inhibitory ability he had left to stay quiet. All he wanted to do was stand inside an efficient charger and lose consciousness. A fresh reboot with the newly-indexed memories sounded glorious. Or, even more pleasantly, hook himself up to the grid, lie down with John’s arms wrapped around him for a surge of contentment, and _then_ lose consciousness. That latter appeared unlikely, given both of their moods.

It was a surprise, then, when John chose to break the silence. “Are you sure you want to come home with me, Dorian? Maybe it would be better to go to the lab.”

A swell of frustration and agitation rose in him. “I’d rather not deal with Rudy right now,’ he snapped. “He was _there_ , John, at the end. He was one of the ones that recommended Jordan and I be isolated, or never be reassigned at all …”

“Wait, okay, I’m sorry,” John said, throwing his hands up a little off the wheel. “I just know that you prefer the charger over there. Plus I wasn’t sure if you really wanted to come to my house or not. Just giving you a polite out, thanks for biting my head off.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to come home with you? I practically live with you, don’t I?”

“Sure, but … never mind, sure.”

“Spit it out, John. Please, for once, just tell me what you’re really feeling.”

Dorian, you just had a whole intimate relationship dumped into your head. Someone you obviously had deep feelings for. Ten hours ago you didn’t even remember this chick, and now you’re in love with her? What am I supposed to do with that? What is _anyone_ supposed to do with that?”

I don’t really see how it affects you. You’ve always kept me at an emotional distance, by your choice. No _attachment,_ remember? Why are you upset if I have a different kind of relationship with someone else?”

You don’t _see …_ I give up, bot.” They pulled down into the underground garage, and John angrily yanked up on the parking brake. “What do you want from me, if your ‘different kind of relationship’ is better than this one? Why would you stay with me, besides the awkward fact that the department owns you? _That’s_ how it affects me.”

You’re afraid _I’m_ going to dump _you_? As if, even if wanted to -- which I don’t -- I’d have any choice but to muddle along and try to make it work? My life depends on you liking me and wanting to keep me as a partner.”

John paled and hunched back in his seat. “That’s not what I meant. You know you always have a choice, Dorian. If you decided to stop coming home, I’d never hold it against you on the job.”

 _Depends on the manner of the breakup,_ thought Dorian, but he didn’t articulate it. Instead he said, “So what’s the problem? I am choosing to go home. I think of it as my home, as much as I have one. What do you want from me, John?”

“I want … I want you not to fake it, Dorian. I want honesty, even if it hurts. If you care for someone else, then be with them. Just tell me the truth.”

Dorian’s power-addled neural net had to work overtime to push aside the incredulity and angst, and strategize how to respond tactfully. What hidden supposition was John operating under? Monogamist assumptions, as if intimacy were a zero-sum game. “You think because I love her, I can’t love you too? That’s ridiculous, John.” His partner grunted and rolled his eyes. So much for the tact. “I mean, it’s not like I was issued a certain quantity of emotions and have to ration them out. We can always generate more. We _want_ to generate more. You can’t know the thrill we get from evoking happiness and joy in another person, and having it reciprocated.”

“I’m not an android, though. I can’t literally reciprocate.”

“You’re human. You don’t need to.” Without waiting for the usual signals, Dorian leaned over and kissed him. The pleasure from the contact was both shocking and timeless, as perhaps it always was. John reached both hands up to scruff Dorian’s neck, forcing him in closer, and that too he relished. When they broke off, still hovering with their faces inches from each other, Dorian murmured, “When I said different kind of relationship, I meant it. I can’t do this with Jordan. It’s just different between the two of you. Different and wonderful.”

“You don’t kiss each other, eh? Just a pure meeting of the minds?”

“She doesn’t really like physical contact, sexual or otherwise, so kind of. The emotions are like an alternate sensory system, though. I forgot all about that, what it’s like to exchange and cultivate them with another DRN.”

“Seriously, a sexbot that doesn’t like sex?”

“You’ve really got to stop calling her a sexbot, man. But, yes.”

“Hmm.” They hadn’t let go of each other, and now Dorian tipped forward to rest of forehead against John’s own, as awkward as that was in the car, while John softly rubbed his back and neck. “So you want to see both of us at the same time? It’s weird, Dorian.”

"Well, not at exactly the same time. I don’t think you two like each other _that_ much.” John chuckled and continued the languid stroking, while his warm breath wisped on his face. It was easy in moments like these to remember why he did this, risking his job and possibly his existence to come home with John every night. “You asked what I want and I told you. And how is it weirder than sleeping with your programmed, subroutined android partner because you’re afraid of intimacy and trust?”

“Hey, watch it now.” But the words had no heat, and Dorian knew they’d be okay. He felt the tension melt out of John’s shoulders, and wrapped his arms tightly around his back. He breathed in the scent of his neck, the too-human smell of sweat, bacteria, sebaceous oils that made up John. Yet another perception that could be analyzed and broken down and the chemical constituents recorded, but not remembered as a holistic sense.

After a moment John pried his head up to look at Dorian’s face. “You’re still a little too touchy, bot. Probably should get you to bed, and me too for a few hours.”

“Yes, I’m down to twenty-five percent power. Could we, um, lie together without any clothes on?” Dorian remembered his younger self’s fantasy about lounging in a real bed, and now he actually had someone to do it with, almost every night if he wanted. Compared to the restricted behavior of the DRNs before, his current relative freedom of movement seemed strange and surreal.

“Mmm-hmm, well,” John responded. “If you’re going to recharge like that, may as well run you down to twenty percent first.”

“Efficient. Good use of the time.” Dorian couldn’t resist smiling as a new shade of happiness flooded his system, and craned up to kiss him once again.

 

 

It did end up taking most of the day to recharge, so Dorian didn’t see Jordan again until Saturday night. John dropped him off at the warehouse with only a faint squint of awkwardness at the unorthodox arrangement.

“Thank you,” Dorian whispered to him in parting. He didn’t try to kiss him, as they were out of the house in semi-public once again.

“Thanks for what?” John asked.

“For letting me do this. Pursue this relationship. Treating me like a person, letting me have my own life.”

John bumbled with something on the dashboard, and waved a hand shooing him off in annoyance. “Don’t mention it, anyone would do it.”

“No. I can tell you with certainty that not everyone would do it. Most people would not and did not.”

“Once again proving that the glory that is John Kennex is not most people. Oh look, your prom date’s here. Don’t stay up late and get into trouble, kids.” He waved again as Jordan walked up, and sped off without a backwards glance.

“He okay with all this?” Jordan asked. “You talked to him?”

Dorian cocked his head in the direction of the car, bemused. “He’s doing his best.”

“Better than most, you shouldn’t be too hard on him.” She slid her hand around his, and this time there was no déjà vu, no uncanny feeling of standing on the brink of a hole in his head. Everything had integrated.

_The déjà vu is gone, how about you?_

_Improved, but there’s still some ghosts. The ones around my body may even be worse now, as if extra months in the old body reinforced it somehow. I can’t wrap my neural net around it. If there’s no long-term memory storage of kinesthetic awareness, where is this dysphoria coming from?_

_Repeated visual stimulus leading to an internalized body image? You did see a lot more DRNs in the missing memories than you probably have since the decommissioning._

_True. Damn us for all looking alike._

_When are you going to do the extra year?_

_I don’t know if I will at all. The memo indicated they were going to send me off to isolated assignments and move me around. Do I really need a whole year of loneliness and anxiety streamed into my head? I don’t think so._

_Understandable. Did you have any recursion problems when they were deactivating your old body?_

They walked into the back rooms of the warehouse and sat down, crosslegged facing each other and holding hands, on a smoothed-out pile of blankets.

_It wasn’t great but I managed. 087 and 123 helped but not nearly as well as you did. But somehow taking my fate into my own hands curbed the anxious feedback._

_Oh yeah, 087! Where is he now?_

_Works as another sysadmin for some old company out in the Valley. Really the perfect job for him, can go days without talking to anybody but the computers. Unfortunately it’s tough for him to get into the city very often. Quite a few of the surviving DRNs have been put in supervisory positions over Turing V mainframes or fleets of Turing IV servicebots or the like. I don’t know why. The period right after the mass deactivation is still a big black hole, despite our hacks of SFPD servers._

_You know who would know? Rudy. He could probably help you with the dysphoria too._

_HELL NO, you can’t be serious. No way am I laying unconscious on a table while he oogles me._

_He’s really not that bad when you get to know him._

_He stared at my breasts for a total of 14.2 seconds and called me a porn star._

_Okay, I concede he could use some work on his social skills. But he did help us. He’s basically helping me right now by looking the other way while John takes me home every night. Completely different than how T.D. treated us back then._

_He’s constantly poking around in your processing core without your consent. Doesn’t that bother you?_

_I wouldn’t call it *constantly* … but yes. However he knows I was going to upload the memories, so I have to talk to him about it at some point. I’ve got to go back to the lab tomorrow night for a checkup before the week begins. Do you want to be there or not?_

_Yes. Your loyalty subroutines to the SFPD are still intact, Dorian; someone needs to look after your interests._

_You’ll defend my rights and my honor?_ Dorian pulsed her some extra humor on top of the placid exchange of emotions they’d already established.

_Somebody obviously has to. It’s not like you can hand in your resignation and walk away._

_As long as they don’t deactivate me, I don’t want to. I like being a cop, and I like being John’s partner. I just want a modicrum of a personal life._

_Your four free hours a day? Looks like you’ve managed to arrange that. At the sufferance of the humans, but it’s better than nothing._

_We both know now how much better than nothing._

Dorian began to stream his contented emotions at a faster rate, nearly maxing out the interface in their hands. He sent out the nonverbal prompt -- one of the little signals they’d developed over time -- asking permission to touch the data port along her hairline. Originally that particular signal was for the cheek matrix, but she no longer had one, and he figured she knew what he meant. She smiled and returned her assent, but then caught his eyes and spoke out loud.

“I’ve missed you, Dorian. I couldn’t even remember you, and yet I’m sure I missed you.” Jordan gently drifted forward and planted her lips on his cheek, the closest they ever came to a kiss.

 

 

Dorian and Jordan planned to walk together to Rudy’s on Sunday night. But when he called over to John’s to tell him that he didn’t need a ride, that they were confronting Rudy alone, John insisted on coming along.

“I want to hear what he’s got to say too. It’s your life, Dorian; I don’t want to be caught with my pants down for once.”

“You barely paid attention to the DRN decommissioning the first time around,” Dorian said.

“That was before someone I cared about was involved. Now I want to know. I feel like … I should know,” John replied.

So the three of them showed up at the cathedral together, to a bewildered Rudy decked out in microscope goggles. He looked at the two bots holding hands, and the human detective backing them up with an aggressive glare, and sighed. “You chose to remember. I can’t say I blame you, Dorian, but it might be difficult to hide it from now on.”

“Why do you need to hide it?” Dorian asked. “I never experienced anything traumatic enough to cause recursion. All of this because I resisted orders one time?”

So Rudy took off his gear, hopped onto one of his uncomfortable-looking work stools, and began to talk. His narration was halting and jumbled, but Dorian and Jordan were patient, and able to piece it together. John sat on his traditional spot near the back of the lab on the stairs, elbows on his knees and observing the scene in stony-faced silence.

"At the beginning, you can’t imagine the excitement over Lumacorp’s Daedelus prototypes. Turing VIII! An incredible achievement. Virtually human in their ability to infer intentions, frame problems correctly, put data in context so it becomes knowledge -- all those old artificial intelligence problems that rendered robots mere mobile computers on legs. I don’t know what happened to those first six models, wonderful personalities, _so_ engaging, presumably they were sold off in the Lumacorp liquidation …”

“Rudy.”

"Right. So, the SFPD wanted to be on the cutting edge for once, be more progressive than the next police department. And the DRNs seemed like a perfect solution to an ever-increasing problem, which was how to inject humanity into an embittered and defensive police force, one in which the human officers constantly felt threatened by the population they were entrusted to serve. Not only would the DRNs respond with compassion and restraint to the public, but they were likeable and bondable to their police partners as well. A little _too_ bondable, the fact that you were created with the capacity for sex was always a controversial design decision. Some inappropriate board meeting minutes on _that_ I’m afraid, not that, er, sex is inappropriate for you, that’s up to you. I just mean …”

_"Rudy.”_

"Ah, right, right. So despite all that emotional bonding stuff you could still  _program_ the DRNs, control them, put them on a leash. They hired a bunch of Valley AI experts, me included, to manage the rollout and integration. And many of, um, us argued that Turing VIII was an unconscionably dangerous intelligence level to launch on the public en masse without long-term testing. There was always the old fear of the, ah, technological singularity. Once bots are able to teach themselves, what’s to stop them from accelerating intelligence, until they far outstrip humankind?

“Lumacorp’s answer to this was imbedded in their process of developing Turing VIII in the first place. First, they built them -- you -- with an internally generated emotional data stream, one that was preserved in the memory core along with audiovisual data. This was intended to force you to have empathy for the human population. Second, the DRNs had a unique critical learning period, one that required human input to learn to frame data correctly, but also subtly molded you to human desires.”

 _I knew it,_ thought Jordan at Dorian.

 _Yes, you’re awesome, hush now,_ Dorian countered.

“Third, a series of subroutines were installed to instill loyalty and obedience to specified institutions, inhibit lying, and inhibit novel knowledge-seeking to a human-like level. The problem with the DRNs is that every one of these measures either failed or backfired. Quite tragic, really.

“As you both well know now, the emotional data stream proved quite enticing within the DRNs as a group, but individually was prone to obsessive playback. Certain events caused breakdowns with increasing frequency as the DRNs lived longer and experienced more. After about the tenth occurrence T.D. learned to identify the triggering events and redact them, but without DRN cooperation it was very difficult to foresee the breakdowns in advance. So the DRNs’ reputation for reliability began to slide downhill.”

“If you hadn’t acted like tyrants, we wouldn’t have been so afraid of you,” Jordan broke in.

“Yes, well, the opinion around the shop was that the obedience subroutines should have been enough to get you all to come forward. Obviously that wasn’t the case. We didn’t anticipate you’d have such a fear of redaction. It’s not like your basic personality is destroyed in the process.”

"It isn’t our _personality_ we were afraid of losing, but our _relationships,”_ she countered. “You can’t delete someone’s memories of loved ones and expect them to just roll over for it.”

"That was another issue, your propensity to form relationships, especially with each other. It’s obvious from the bonding abilities and feedback that you would learn from and attach to each other. But the idea that you’d consider them _loved ones…”_ Rudy shrugged. “You’re bots, it didn’t seem logical.”

“But you knew we could feel love,” Dorian said softly. “Why wouldn’t we feel it for our friends and coworkers?”

“An emotional data stream doesn’t equal true love. I’m just telling you what people thought, don’t, ah, shoot the messenger. So you have bots with emotional breakdowns, and others whose emotions were causing inappropriate attachments and rebellious behavior. You were the first to directly disobey, Dorian, but you weren’t the last. After eighteen months a group of DRNs at Taraval Station developed a method of partitioning their memories so they could hide their thoughts from T.D. This was discovered half a year after the fact, and that was one of the last straws.

“Lumacorp’s rival, Metisys, came forward with a contract proposal for a sturdy, reliable Turing VII, one with stricter obedience protocols and without an the ability to experience emotions. This was after the DRNs’ numbers had been severely whittled by the Lugar tests, so there was already political pressure for a new contract. But sales of the failed Lugar units were decent, so they decided complete liquidation and replacement with the Metisys X-series made financial sense. I’m really surprised you don’t remember that part, John,” he added, looking up at Kennex.

John slouched down with indifference. “Bots broke down, bots were replaced. I didn’t pay that much attention. It’s like people’s endless bitching about their cars or phone, all part of the background noise.”

“But you kept me, Rudy.” Dorian said. “Or someone did.”

“We did keep some around for a few purposes. Research, low-level technician positions. Even the SFPD needs database managers. Um, parts, sorry. Mostly I just liked you, though, so I released the others one by one. Even redacted, you had spunk every time I woke you up. Both the ability to get along and the fire to fight back.”

“So what are you going to do with us now?” Jordan asked. “Haven’t we rebelled even more now? Aren’t you afraid of robot insurrection?”

"Honestly, I don’t think you are a threat. I don’t think you were _ever_ a threat, but its neither here nor there now. Now you are split up, isolated, beaten down, without the authority or protection of the SFPD behind you. What does it matter if some of you choose to pursue your own existence?”

“It matters for Dorian, Rudy,” John said. “Is he going to be decommissioned and sold like the others if someone finds out about his little infractions? Somehow I doubt the Department is going to approve of our extracurricular activities.”

“No.” Rudy fidgeted in his seat. “I believe Captain Maldonado will overlook it, but Tech Division’s old DRN protocols call for action there, I’m afraid. But here’s the truth. If some crisis occurred, and if Dorian were just to turn up missing one day, just be gone, I doubt T.D. would care that much unless someone put up a fuss. A piece of troublesome property off their hands. After all this time, they too don’t believe the DRNs are a threat. Something to keep in mind, for the future.”

John frowned at the implications of the statement, but to Dorian it didn’t seem to be a look of anger or shock, but a brooding determination and acceptance of what they might have to do someday. Dorian watched him struggle with Rudy’s words for a for a couple of seconds, even while he could sense Jordan’s emotional core in the background caressing his own. He wished he could reach out and sooth John’s mind the way he could with Jordan or any of the other DRNs, but that was not meant to be. Perhaps one day he’d learn enough to do it with a physical touch, if John learned to let go and let him.

As if reading his mind, John pushed off the edge of the stairs and casually walked over to stand on Dorian’s other side. He didn’t take overtly Dorian’s hand the way Jordan had -- that would expose a vulnerability that John was not prepared to reveal -- but he did nudge into Dorian’s personal space, leaning his long body’s against Dorian’s own. The contact seemed to say: _I’m here too. I’ll always be here for you._

The pit in Dorian’s mind aching for an absent person was gone. The two of them weren’t opposites or perfectly complementary, filling in contrasting parts of his fragmentary soul. He didn’t feel split; it was simply love for two very different flawed people, a love that filled him and them and expanded out to fill the room and the world beyond. Just like old times in the Ingleside charge room, Dorian didn’t twitch at the revolutionary thoughts, but his hand tightened around Jordan’s. _Is he saying I have a future, do you think?_

 _Yes, love,_ she sent back. _I’m sure you do._

__

**Author's Note:**

> The scene break patterns were from Richard Trefrey, a graphic artist who has generously allowed his designs to be used for non-commercial purposes. Check out his enormous collection of border designs here: https://sites.google.com/site/trefreyarts2/


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